


Every Man's Got A Right

by MollyC



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 2.09 Croatoan, 5.04 The End, AU, But it doesn't stick because SPN, DCBB13, Hell, M/M, POV First Person, Season 2 spoilers, Season 5 Spoilers, Sex, Technically includes major char death, Time Travel, Torture, canon AU, casefic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-03
Updated: 2013-10-03
Packaged: 2017-12-27 17:44:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 78,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/981795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MollyC/pseuds/MollyC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas never expected to live through Dean's last plan.  Now, he's not only alive, he's in the past--before Dean went to Hell, before he made the deal at all.  Can a fallen angel and a couple of hunters change the future by altering the past?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

I woke up flat on my back, spread out like the Vitruvian Man on a hard surface that felt like concrete or asphalt. I blinked my eyes open and saw pale sky through leaves. Nothing hurt. I sat up, which didn’t make anything start hurting either. When I put my hand to my side where the big wound had been, there was nothing—no blood, no tenderness, not so much as an old scar. Hell, my shirt wasn't even torn.

Not that I was complaining, because the last thing I remembered was bracing myself against a wall to empty my last clip at Risa, hoping to catch her as she went down with three croats on her. I was pretty sure I'd hit her, but by then my aim was crap because of the blood loss and it might not've been a clean kill. I liked Risa, and she hadn't deserved to die slowly, feeling the teeth. I hadn't bothered saving a bullet for myself; when the clip ran empty I'd just dropped the gun and let my knees buckle. I didn't even remember hitting the floor.

A quick look around placed me in the middle of a street, small-town or really suburban, lined with trees and single-family houses. Everything was remarkably well-kept, even the lawns mowed, something I hadn't seen in two years or more. Maybe I'd ended up in one of the places where the US government still held sway, though I couldn't imagine how. And regardless I didn't see anyone outside which was, as they say, a bad sign.

I climbed to my feet and took stock. It didn't take long; I pretty much had my clothes. No pack—I'd dropped that before we went into the building anyway—no H&K, no Beretta (I spared a moment to mourn the loss; that was the gun Dean taught me to shoot with), not even a pill bottle. My hunting knife was still in its sheath at the small of my back, and that was all. “Fantastic,” I muttered. I don't remember when I picked up the human habit of talking to myself.

There didn't seem to be much difference between the two directions the street ran, so I picked one arbitrarily. As I walked I wondered idly if I was hallucinating as I bled out. If so it seemed like kind of a ripoff; I could think of things I'd much rather get visions of—Francine and her talented tongue, for example. A really good hamburger. The first time I realized that when I was stoned the place where my Grace used to be didn't _hurt_ anymore.

So yeah. Lots of things that would've been better than waking up in suburbia, though I had to admit I preferred my current position to waiting to die while Dean went on a suicide run and wouldn't even let me stand with him—Sam was his brother, but Lucifer was mine, damn it. But Dean had needed a distraction, and it was one last thing I could give him, like he ever noticed I'd given him everything already. Of course I had no idea where Dean was, so for all I knew he was still trying to kill the Devil. Or, much more likely, he was dead.

I got about a block before I heard the sound of running footsteps, followed immediately by someone bursting around the corner maybe thirty feet ahead. He was a big guy, really big, a good six inches taller than me and broad to match, and he carried a shotgun. Not a croat, then, and I was pretty sure he was running from something. But then he glanced up and I got a good look at his face and adrenaline hit me like a fist as Lucifer pounded down the street straight at me.

* * *

“Run!” he panted, even as I fumbled for my useless knife. My brother skidded to a halt and reached for me. I flinched away and pulled the knife to slash it through the air between us. And Lucifer—dodged. As if my mere mortal steel could so much as inconvenience him. He danced back, holding his hands out placatingly.

“Whoa, whoa, I'm not one of them!” he exclaimed. “Look, my name's Sam, and we have to run.”

I couldn't make the words make sense. I almost dropped my knife. My ability to process what was happening just shut down, and he must have seen it in my face because he grabbed my arm and said sharply, “Freak later. Run _now_.” I tensed for the brush of his Grace but it didn’t come.

I could hear what sounded like a large group, approaching at speed, and it occurred to me that I could go where Lucifer led me or I could let a bunch of croats tear me apart for the second time in less than a waking hour, so I pulled together what wits I could muster and nodded. “Good,” he said, and took off. I followed.

I spend a lot of time following Winchesters.

Lucifer moved fast on Sam’s long legs. But by then I'd had five years of a life in which speed was often the only thing that kept me alive, and it wasn't as hard as I might have expected to keep up. As we ran I thought furiously, trying to work out just what the hell was going on—why did Lucifer feel the need to flee the croats, if it was croats? If he wanted to avoid them, why didn't he just fly away? Why did he care what happened to me, why didn't he seem to recognize me, why had he said his name was Sam?

Lucifer led me out of the open street almost immediately, which was probably a good plan if we were being chased. We ran flat-out for a minute or so, and then Lucifer ducked around a fence and put his back against it. He was breathing hard, almost like he needed to, and trying to control it to listen for whatever had been chasing him, and now us. After a few seconds it became clear that the croats weren't in hearing distance any longer, and his tense posture relaxed a little. He turned his head to look at me and mustered a grin that was mostly convincing. “You got a name?” he asked.

Once again I had the disconcerting feeling that some of the gears of my brain were slipping. I stared at him for a moment too long, and his expression turned serious again. “Come on, man, hold it together a little longer. What's your name?” He sounded patient, understanding—none of the mocking edge my older brother's voice had held the one time I'd talked to him (before I fell, before Sam said yes; Joanna and Ellen died that day because Lucifer tricked me into a trap, and we didn't even stop him from raising Death. Dean didn't speak to me civilly for two weeks afterward).

“Cas,” I said, right before the pause would have been too long again. “You can call me Cas.”

“OK, Cas,” he said, without even a flicker of recognition. “I'm Sam. Look, we have to get to the med center downtown. By now my brother should be back there, and there are a few other people too who aren't infected with whatever this is.”

“Brother,” I said dumbly, thinking _Which one?_ And then, “What do you mean, whatever this is? It's Croatoan.”

Instead of looking terrified (like a normal person) or smug (like…well, Lucifer), he just seemed surprised. “You've seen it before?” he asked.

“Everyone has seen it before!” I burst out, probably louder than was wise. “Two years now it's been killing people, changing them, the whole world, of course I know what it is!”

Lucifer—or maybe, just maybe, Sam—made frantic shushing gestures and said, “OK! Just, calm down. I think we need to get somewhere safe, safer, before we discuss this. You can move?”

I grabbed the ragged remnants of my control and forced myself into what Dean sometimes called Tin Soldier Mode. I hardly ever did it anymore, because he hated it, but hey—Dean wasn't around to mock me, and if I let myself freak out I'd just get myself, and Sam's body, messily killed. “Yes, I can move,” I said. Lucifer-Sam studied me for a second and then nodded decisively.

It took us less than fifteen minutes to make it downtown; wherever we were, it wasn't a big place. When we turned cautiously onto the block that Lucifer-Sam said held the med center, I swayed and had to catch myself on the wall of the building we were skulking along. The Impala sat there in the street, dully gleaming in the diffuse overcast light, looking as pristine as the first time I saw it. I never did manage to make myself think of the car as “her”, no matter what Dean said.

“Cas, you OK?” Lucifer-Sam asked, sounding sincerely concerned.

“Yeah, I...that car, I know someone who used to have one just like it. It just caught me by surprise.”

“It's my brother's,” he said, and the note of genuine affection in his voice was what convinced me.

Somehow, this was Sam—Sam Winchester, the boy with the demon blood, polluted through no fault of his own as an infant. Sam who broke the last seal, Sam who always and only wanted to do the right thing, Sam who had been so delighted to meet an angel.

Sam, who was Lucifer's vessel, but I didn't think he was that, here, wherever here was.

I didn’t have time to think about it before Sam was knocking on the outer of a set of glass doors leading into a generic waiting area. And after a second…by then I expected it, really I did, but when Dean came into view I gasped. I could feel the blood leaving my face.

I didn’t quite faint, in the end, but the entire world went wavery and dim and far-away, and once Dean had the doors open he and Sam had to help me stumble inside. I could hear Sam talking, no doubt explaining my presence. When words finally started connecting into sentences again, I was sitting on a hard plastic chair, leaning forward with my face in my hands, with Sam next to me saying, “OK, just breathe, we’re OK here.” He had one big hand gently on my shoulder. I shuddered in a long breath and looked up, and he patted me and pulled back. “You back with us?” he asked.

“Yeah, OK. I’m good,” I said, not entirely truthfully. “Either of you got a drink?” Since I woke up I’d felt disgustingly sober, and my chest ached the way it always did when there was nothing to mask it. Drunk wasn’t as good a fix for that as high, but it was better than sobriety. Sam had said this place was a clinic, maybe I could pick something up if it hadn’t been cleaned out already.

From the short hallway that led to the rest of the clinic, Dean said, “Here.” He pulled a flask from his pocket as he came towards me—left pocket, so whiskey—and held it out. “Drink up, you look like you can use it.” I took the flask from him, careful not to touch his fingers with my own. I wasn’t sure I could deal with that. “Sam said you’re Cas?” Dean asked as I swallowed. It was decent booze, too, nothing homemade.

“Yeah,” I said, and took another swig. I really wanted to just drink the whole thing, but I wasn’t sure when I’d eaten last and if there were croats to deal with I had to be on the ball. That was the problem with alcohol—enough of it to fully calm the ache of my vanished Grace and I was too wasted to function.

“Great. I’m Dean. Come on, we should get out of sight of the street.” Dean...Dean grinned at me, and held out a hand to help me up. I pretended to misunderstand and put the flask in it instead as I stood. I could not stop staring at him; Father help me, he looked so _young_. He had a tiny scar over his right eye that he'd gotten falling off a bicycle when he was eleven.

I fixed that scar when I rebuilt his broken body to house his rescued soul; I smoothed away all of his scars, except for the mark my Grace left where I gripped him tight. But he had it now. I was suddenly sure that he'd have all the scars I erased—the faint one from the chupacabra on his right forearm, the twisting rope over his left kidney from a werewolf, all the mementos of a life spent hunting.

“Dude,” Dean said, and I realized I'd been looking at him for far too long. He threw a puzzled glance at Sam, who shrugged. “Are you stoned or something?”

It took a second before I could be sure I wouldn't laugh. “Generally, yes. But not right now.” Dean made an incredulous face, but said nothing.

“Let's get out of sight,” Sam said after a second. Dean and I trailed him; I remembered just in time not to fall into step with Dean. We came out in a central office area, with a desk and a receptionist's station and hallways leading, I assumed, to examination and storage rooms. There was a man there, dark-skinned and perhaps twenty years older than Dean. “Who's this?” he asked, sounding a little wary. I couldn't really blame him.

“I'm Cas,” I said. “I ran into Sam out in the street.”

Dean turned to look at me. “You're not from around here?” he asked.

“No. I'm just...just passing through,” I said. Or hallucinating while I bled out, but whatever.

“How do we know he isn't one of them?” the man asked, eyeing me.

I shrugged. “I'm not cut or bitten, you can check me,” I said. “Lock me in a spare room till you see if I flip. Whatever you want, I just don't want to go back out there. I'm not in the mood for dodging croats.”

“Croats,” Dean said skeptically.

“Cas has seen this before,” Sam said. Everyone looked at me; I looked at Sam.

“Yeah,” I said slowly. “But you _haven't_. Have you?” Come to think of it, Sam looked different, too, with the last faint traces of adolescence still lingering in his face. By the time I'd met him, those hints had vanished.

“No,” Sam replied. “All we've got is a word carved in a phone pole and people trying to kill us.”

I looked around the room. The lights were on, electric lights, and no one else seemed to find that remarkable. It obviously hadn't been looted. There was a paper Starbucks cup on one of the desks, with coffee still in it. Combine all of that with Dean, who had the scars from his life before Hell, who was so clearly _not_ the man who'd spent us all on a blatant trap. I’d seen him _smile_.

Oh, fuck me senseless. I wanted to laugh, to shout, but if I did that I wouldn't stop for hours. _Soldier up, Cas_.

“It's a virus,” I said aloud. “Like...that movie, what was it called? It was set in England.” I had never seen it, but Dean told me about it when Croatoan started showing up. “ _28 Days Later_. A friend of mine, he called them 'fast zombies' at first. It's incurable, efficient. Scary as hell. If someone's infected, all you can do is let them say their goodbyes if you have time before they flip.” We rarely did.

“And you know all this how?” a new voice asked. We all turned. It was a blond woman in a lab coat, which was clearly well-worn but clean and not even close to threadbare. She looked spooked, but determined, and wore a nametag that proclaimed her Doctor Lee.

I was opening my mouth to answer when another woman stepped into view behind the first one. She was younger, wearing a floral scrub top, and she was infected.

See, one of the reasons Dean puts up with me is that my departed Grace left me with some quirks. I'm a lot stronger than I look, for example. I have a great sense of direction, and fantastic aim. I don't get sick—I'm even immune to Croatoan itself. (Figuring that out? Not much fun.) And I can see it when certain things are wrong with people. When they're possessed, for example—though the angels could hide from me, or I'd have realized much sooner that Sam was only Sam. In any case, I can see it even before the infected start showing symptoms, hours before they flip.

This woman had already flipped. The infection floated in the air around her like a fog. And her eyes were narrowing at me. She could tell I wasn't just a guy, though she clearly didn't know what to make of me. It made sense, if this was before Dean went to Hell and the Host was permitted to return to Earth—not that I’m a typical angel these days anyway. I didn't understand why she wasn't raving and throwing herself at us, but she was a croat regardless.

I pulled my gaze away from her and made a show of reluctance, looking down at the floor. I'm still no good at lying, but I do better if I'm not looking straight at anyone, and it wasn't like _this_ Dean knew my tells. “I used to be a soldier,” I said to the linoleum, skirting the truth as closely as I dared. “We weren't exactly official. We got sent in when there was an outbreak. I know all this because I lost friends to it.” Risa. Matt and Smitty and Francine. Yeager (who’d been minutes from flipping when Dean shot him). And that was just in the last twenty-four hours.

“That's crap,” the dark-skinned man said. “You were a soldier? Where'd you serve?”

“Lots of different places,” I said, grinning at him to hide irritation. “Does it really matter? I know a few things that can help you, no matter where I learned them, OK?”

“How do we know you're not one of them?” he asked stubbornly. Dean and Sam were watching us with interest; Dr. Lee looked perturbed. The croat was pretending to be frightened.

“You want to check my blood? If I'm a croat, there'll be sulfur in it.”

“It can't _be_ that,” Dr. Lee said. Everyone looked at her, and she shook her head. “While you were out,” she said to Sam. “I examined Eric's body, Tanner's body. He had an elevated lymphocyte count, like someone fighting off an infection, and a weird residue in his blood, and if I didn't know better I'd swear it was sulfur.” She looked cautiously hopeful. “Whatever it really is, it might give us a way to check.”

“It doesn't show up till they flip,” I said, hating to crush her. “But maybe we should all get checked, just in case? Or lock ourselves in separate rooms for a few hours and _then_ get checked. It takes four, maybe five hours.”

The croat was looking more and more pissed off under her fake fear. I had no idea what to say to convince Sam and Dean she was infected; they had no reason to trust my word on it. “I think you’re one of them,” she declared, with a hysterical note in her voice. Dr. Lee laid a reassuring hand on her arm and said, “Pam, just calm down. He’s not suggesting we shoot anyone, OK?”

“He’s with them, and they shot Mr. Tanner!” Pam waved a hand at Sam and Dean.

I was opening my mouth to reply when yet another woman burst out of the door behind the two civilians. This one was middle-aged and looked like a housewife, but she was infected too; she hit Dr. Lee hard and they both went over. Pam shrieked and jumped back.

The next several seconds went in the weird not-really-slow motion of fights. Dean, who was closest, grabbed the older Croat’s arm and yanked her up off the doctor the instant before her teeth connected. She snarled and twisted in his grip, her free hand coming up to claw at his face, and he dodged the blow by less than an inch.

Sam and I were both moving by then. He pulled his gun, the Taurus he favored, but the croat was struggling too hard for him to get a clean shot.

I drew my knife again as I went, wishing in the faint way I always did that I could just call it to my hand. The croat was focused on Dean, who looked a little startled at her strength. I stepped up behind her, clapped my left hand down on her shoulder for leverage and control, and slammed the blade into the knot of tendon at the base of her skull.

The blow was a little off-center and scraped bone, but it did the job. She went limp, dead even as her legs gave out, her collapse catching Dean off-guard enough that he almost followed her down. I let the momentum of her fall pull her off the knife and took a step back.

“Don't touch the blood,” I said, into the ringing silence that followed. “That's how it spreads, through the blood.” For a few more seconds no one said anything. They all alternated between staring at me and staring at the body, even Pam, though she seemed more angry than shocked. Dr. Lee just looked appalled; the dark-skinned man was shading quickly into outright hostility.

Dean and Sam shared a look I couldn't decipher, and then Dean spoke with false brightness. “OK, I like the lock ourselves in separate rooms plan. In a couple hours when we’re sure no one else is gonna Hulk out on us, we can work on getting the hell out of Dodge.”

* * *

I insisted on donning gloves to move the croat’s body; it didn’t matter for me, of course, but that was not a discussion I wanted to have and the place was a doctor’s office so latex gloves were easy. Dr. Lee actually backed me on that one, though she kept glancing at me like I was an unexploded bomb. The remaining croat continued to not attack anyone, though she put on a show of disgust when I cleaned my knife on the dead woman’s clothes before sheathing it. The dark-skinned man, who I discovered was called Mark, watched me narrowly the whole time. As he and Dr. Lee and Pam stepped into their chosen rooms I saw Dean and Sam in low-voiced conference. I didn’t stare; I had other concerns.

The solution was a locked cabinet and the key that I discovered dangling from a magnet stuck to the underside of Dr. Lee’s desk. My hands were faintly shaking as I fit the key into the cabinet’s catch and swung the door open to reveal shelves of bottled pills. The selection was limited and there wasn’t much of any one thing, but the relief was overwhelming and I had to prop myself up for a few seconds. As I straightened and reached for a bottle of Oxy—best to start with the basics—Dean said from behind me, “Stealing drugs? Classy.”

I made myself not pause, twisting the cap off. “We’ve got a town full of croats, oh Fearless Leader, I don’t think anyone’s gonna arrest me.” I pulled the cotton out of the bottle, shook two pills into my palm, and swallowed them dry. Only then did I turn enough to see Dean’s face, which was covered with confusion. I realized what I’d called him (Dean busting my ass about my pills set off some ingrained reflexes) and hastened to cover it. “Look, I have chronic pain, OK? I don’t know where my meds are; I lost my pack before I ran into Sam.”

Dean didn’t reply for a second, and when he did he said, “Dude, do you know me from somewhere?”

I tucked the Oxy bottle into my pocket, where it made a comforting weight, and turned back to the cabinet, combing over the contents for a few moments to think. Finally, right before Dean asked again, I said, “Sort of.”

“Sort of,” Dean repeated, and great, now he sounded suspicious. This at least was an emotion I knew how to deal with in him.

“You’re…well, OK, you might not think I’m crazy,” I said, picking up a few other bottles and stowing them. “I have dreams, Dean. About you and Sam. I know a lot about both of you, but no, we have never met.” I wanted to laugh at how true that was; I had _never_ met this Dean, this before-Hell Dean who hadn’t spent ten years with Alastair guiding his every move. I hated lying to him, but there’d be time for full disclosure about the future when we were out of this town.

I knew the rustle was him drawing his gun again and taking a step away from me, to be out of easy lunging range, but I didn’t look at him until he growled, “Christo,” so he could see that my eyes didn’t flick black.

“I’m not a demon,” I said, and kept my hands still and where he could see them. “You’re Dean Winchester, and you save people. Your brother was at Stanford until his girlfriend Jessica was killed by the same yellow-eyed thing that killed your mother when Sam was a baby. Your father died sometime in the last year. I’m sorry if this is strange for you, Dean, but I can’t help it.”

Dean’s expression was hard and angry, a combination that was weirdly comforting in its familiarity. “You’re a psychic?” he demanded. “You’re too old to be—” and he cut off.

_Like Sam_ , I finished silently, and shook my head. “I don’t know what I am,” aside from fallen. “I just know what I know.” Dean's gun didn't waver, but his face did; I could read the uncertainty in the way I didn't recognize his expression at all. My Dean could be wrong, but he was _never_ uncertain, at least not after Sam said yes. It had been more than two years since I'd seen Dean anything but determined and focused and sure. “Look—there are things I'm not telling you, but I will. Once we're away from this town, I'll tell you everything I can.” And that was when I realized.

If I told them everything, _we could save Sam_. If Sam lived, Dean wouldn't make his deal. He wouldn't go to Hell. He wouldn't break the first seal, so Sam wouldn't get the opportunity to break the last, and Lucifer would never rise and the Apocalypse would never start—and I _wanted_ that to be the reason I felt suddenly lightheaded, but it wasn't.

I could save Dean from Hell.

Alastair would never touch him. He would never be offered the knife.

I could save him before he ever entered the Pit, before he was tormented for decades; he would not need to be raised from Perdition because he'd never go there in the first place.

I sat down on the floor, a barely-controlled collapse, and leaned my head back. The edge of a shelf dug into my scalp, and I didn't care in the least. Dean watched me for a silent moment, but he didn't track me with the gun. Finally he asked, “Cas, are you OK?”

I smiled at him. “Never better,” I said sincerely. He looked dubious, so I continued, “Just the Oxy kicking in. We should go lock ourselves up.”

He hesitated a moment, then tucked his gun away. “OK,” he said, and this time when he offered me a hand I took it. He helped me to my feet; I was so distracted by the feeling of his skin against mine that I forgot not to stare at him. “This time you’re stoned,” he said, not quite smiling. He still didn’t trust me, not the way he trusted Sam (the way he would have trusted me, years in the future), but he was willing to give me the benefit of the doubt and that was enough for the time being.

It wasn’t just the first warm hints of the OxyContin that made my chest ease. I remembered Hell, better than I wanted to—of all the angelic memories to retain in perfect, bloody detail, why _those?_ —and I remembered Dean, his soul dimmed with the tendrils of demonic black twisting through it. And I was going to spare him that.

“This isn’t stoned,” I protested mildly. I could have made a smart remark. Any other time I would have. But not just then.

“Looks like it to me,” Dean said.

“No, I just realized…I can’t explain it right now, but I just realized something good,” I said, still smiling. “Dean—”

I honestly don't know what else I was going to say, so it was just as well that someone started pounding on the front door of the clinic before I had to find out. It was muffled by two sets of doors; we might well not have heard it if we'd been in our isolation rooms. But Dean caught it, and he went back to being all business in a moment. “Let me in!” a man's voice called. “Please, hey, open up!”

I looked at Dean to see what he wanted to do, and discovered he was already on his way to the door. “Get Sam,” he threw over his shoulder as he went. I turned in the direction of Sam's room, but he didn't need to be told; he must have heard the calling as well. We both followed Dean towards the front of the clinic.

By the time we got there, Dean had the door open and was yanking a young man through. The kid was tallish, blond, with a scar on his temple that didn't detract from raw-boned good looks. But there was a problem.

He was possessed.

“Well the hits just keep coming,” I said, disgusted, and the demon's gaze landed on me. Like the croat, he could tell I wasn't normal. The smoke of the demon beneath the skin seethed restlessly, wary.

“What do you mean, Cas?” Dean said over his shoulder. The demon was leaning on him in a way guaranteed to inhibit his mobility if a fight broke out.

“He's got a wound,” I said. “He might be infected too, we're gonna have to get him a room of his own.” There was blood on the young man’s sturdy pants, staining his calf.

“Infected?” the demon asked. “What are you talking about?”

Mark chose that moment to make an appearance from the clinic, exclaiming, “Duane! Where you been?” The doctor and the croat hovered on the other side of the interior door as our little procession limped towards it.

“On a fishing trip up by Roslyn. I came back this afternoon,” the demon said. He sounded really convincingly distressed, I had to give him that, but he kept watching me even as we walked. “I…I saw Roger McGill being dragged out of his house by people we know! They started cutting him with knives! I ran, I've been hiding in the woods ever since. Has anybody seen my mom and dad?”

“Awkward,” Dean said under his breath, and Sam grimaced.

We got the demon settled on a stool in one of the exam rooms and Dr. Lee bent over his leg. I faded carefully out of the room and hurried over to the doctor's desk again. She had the usual litter of pens and pencils in a cup, but when I slid the top drawer open I hit paydirt, in the form of a Sharpie.

There's a reason Bobby had had the more complex devil's trap drawn on his ceiling; it's harder to break and holds more powerful demons. But the quick version works quite well for the lower ranks, which I thought this demon was, so I sketched as fast as I could.

I had one more sigil left to draw when the exam room door opened again and Dean came striding out. He was clearly looking for me, and nearly tripped in his surprise when he saw me crouching on the floor. “Dude,” he began, and I met his eyes, one finger over my lips. After a moment he nodded. “You gotta stay with the rest of us,” he went on, just a little too loud. “If we're not gonna be staying apart, we need to keep our eyes on each other.”

I finished my last sigil and stood, capping the marker again to slip it into my pocket next to the OxyContin. “Sorry,” I said. “Just a little crowded in there.”

“Yeah, I'll wait out here with you,” Dean said, moving away from the door. He beckoned me to join him and we both leaned on one of the desks, side by side so we could watch the exam room. It felt familiar.

“OK, what's the deal?” Dean asked, low-voiced. “You think we've got a demon?”

“The new guy, Duane,” I agreed.

“And you know this how?” Dean shot me a sideways glance.

I blew out a frustrated breath. “I can see it, Dean,” I said.

He thought it over for a second. “Uh-huh. OK. Let's say I believe that.”

“Well, it's easy to test,” I said. “When they come out, if he walks through the trap I'm wrong, and no one gets hurt. If he gets stuck in it, I'm right and we can exorcise him.” Dean shrugged in a way that meant the cost was low enough that he was willing to go along with my plan. “Thing is, Duane...isn't our only problem. The nurse, Pam, she's a croat.” Beside me Dean tensed.

“You're saying she's infected,” he said.

“I'm saying she's flipped. She's been a croat since I laid eyes on her. That's why I suggested testing everyone's blood.”

Dean took his attention away from the exam room door to look me up and down. “You know all this sounds crazy,” he said. “I'll buy you know about this Croatoan thing, but you can see when people are infected? That's one hell of a superpower.”

Compared to what I used to be able to do, it was nothing at all. I laughed and said, “Let's just wait and see what happens when Duane comes out.”

For a second Dean was quiet. “I got reason to think you're right about Duane,” he said. “So OK. We'll wait and see.”

We waited. Dean watched the door, but I could tell he was keeping some of his attention for me. This Dean was so different from my Dean, but I could read him just as well—better, even, because this Dean was so much less guarded than mine had been by the end. He was wary of me, yes, but inclined to believe me. I turned over my memories, trying to tease out anything that could help us here, but all I could recall was Dean's short summary of the events when Croatoan had appeared again. _Sam and I ran into it once,_ I remembered. _It makes people into fast zombies. They all disappeared after a while—too bad that's not happening now, huh? Sam was immune._ He hadn't mentioned anything about a possessed man, implying he hadn't known of Duane's affliction; perhaps the demon was here to observe the action of the virus.

Out of absent habit I patted at my pockets. The pocket with the pill bottles rattled, at least, which was comforting. And then, in the tiny, useless interior pocket I never used, my fingers encountered something, a hard lump. It was walnut-sized, maybe, but through the fabric of the pocket it felt spiky. I paused for long enough that Dean glanced at me curiously before I stuck a careful finger into the pocket to encounter smooth metal.

I stopped myself before I pulled it out, because I really didn’t think Dean would react well to seeing his amulet in my hands. He’d lent it to me, two and a half years in his future, five years in my past; when I couldn’t fly anymore to search for my Father I tried to give it back but he wouldn’t take it. (I should have known then that he had given up on Sam, even though that was a long time before Sam said yes to Lucifer.) That amulet was the only thing I managed to keep through my fall, transferring it from pocket to backpack to footlocker. Even Jimmy Novak’s trenchcoat had fallen to expediency, but the amulet I preserved as a reminder of a time when Dean trusted me enough to trust me with his most precious possession. Last I knew it was in my cabin, still in the footlocker. I’d thought about taking it with me on that last run, but…when Dean gave it to me, he said not to lose it. Letting it sit on my forgotten corpse felt like losing it.

But now it was here, and I had no idea how or why.

I was spared thinking about it by everyone else emerging from the exam room. “—way of knowing in advance,” Dr. Lee was saying. “Beverly’s blood was fine when I first looked at it. It looks like he was right.” She nodded at me. “The residue doesn’t show up until the person changes.” Duane was in the lead, with Sam and Mark pointedly side-by-side behind him. So both of them ran into him when he hit the edge of the devil’s trap and couldn’t go any further. I pushed myself away from the desk so I was standing straight.

Duane looked at the floor as Sam and Mark sorted themselves out, and I saw the snarl spread over his face. Beside me, Dean nodded and called, “Christo.” Sam’s head snapped around in surprise as Duane’s eyes flicked black all over, and then Sam threw himself out of the trap, yanking Mark with him.

For a second everyone stood frozen. Sam and Dean were watching Duane, who was glaring at me. But I resisted the urge to stare back, instead keeping my attention on Pam, so I saw it when she launched herself at Sam. Reaching for a gun I didn’t have slowed me for a second, and then I dove for her, cursing.

Behind me Dean barked his brother’s name. I missed my grab for the croat by inches and she barreled into Sam, knocking him over. She had something bright in her hand, a scalpel I thought, and I caught a glimpse of blood running down her wrist. She was slashing at Sam even as they fell; when they hit the floor it was with her bloody hand pressed over the junction of Sam’s neck and shoulder. He threw her off, grunting with the effort, as I recovered my balance and turned. Pam went sprawling at my feet and I kicked the hand that held the scalpel; the blade skittered away. Sam twisted and drew his gun as Dean leveled his 1911. The shots were almost simultaneous. Pam jerked and collapsed, halfway through trying to shove herself up again.

Dean took a long careful step, his face set, until he was standing directly over the Croat, and shot her again, in the head this time. Sam clicked the Taurus's safety on, set the gun on the floor, and shoved it towards me. I met his eyes, perplexed, and he said hoarsely, “She bled on me.” Dean froze in the midst of holstering his gun. “I'm infected,” Sam went on, pulling his shirt collar away from a slash on his neck. It was bleeding, and the bloody print of Pam's hand was smeared over it. “So I guess I just need time to say my goodbyes.”

“Oh, kid,” Mark said. He actually sounded sympathetic, if a little numb. Dr. Lee pressed a hand over her mouth and groped her way to a chair to fall into it.

I picked up the Sam's gun. “You're not infected, Sam,” I said. Sam and Dean fixed me with identical looks of incredulous hope. Dr. Lee drew a breath to speak, but Duane's voice cut in before she could.

“OK, I have got to know,” the demon said. His eyes were still black, as if he didn't see the point of hiding, and he was actually leaning on the barrier that held him in the trap, a bizarre effect indeed; it looked like he was resting on empty air. “What is your deal, buddy? Because I have to tell you, you're a little more on the ball than Abbott and Costello here.”

I studied him, feeling the faint nausea that always came from watching a demon roil under the surface of a stolen body. It hadn't made me sick when I was an angel, of course. Then I'd felt disgust, but it was an intellectual thing and all but subsumed in the urge to smite. I forced a careless grin. “I'm just a guy,” I said. “I know a few tricks, that's all. Not that I had to use any on you. You just walked into it.” I made an expansive gesture that was meant to convey just walking into a trap, and the demon glared.

Demons hate it when you're snarky at them. It's like they think they have a monopoly or something.

The demon opened his mouth. I felt a physical desire to go and lay my hand on him, to _burn_ him out, but my Grace had lost the strength for that even before it deserted me entirely. But fortunately, I had an alternative. “ _Ol sonuf voresagi, goho yad balt,_ ” I said, and the demon jerked and fell to one knee with a grunt. “ _Karem, adapehaat,”_ and the demon shuddered, its grip on its host failing—I taught everyone in camp the Enochian because it was so much faster than the Latin exorcism. “ _Oksex doaipe yayad!_ ” The smoke poured from Duane’s mouth and swirled in the air for just a moment before it vanished, and Duane collapsed.

I was getting used to shocked silences. This one was broken by Dr. Lee. “What in the ever-loving _fuck_ was _that?_ ” she demanded. Suddenly I was tired, and trudged to the other desk to sit down, setting Sam’s gun on a pile of file folders. I didn't put my feet up, but only because it would have been too much effort.

“A demon,” Dean said at last. “It was a demon, and he just exorcised it.” He eyed me speculatively. “You're a hunter, aren't you?”

I shrugged. “Close enough.” Dean drew breath to continue—no doubt some version of _And what the hell language was that?—_ but he was interrupted.

“A demon,” Dr. Lee said flatly. “A _demon_?” She kept looking between me and Dean and Sam as if she expected one of us to admit we were joking.

“Yes,” Sam said. He was still sitting on the floor, but he'd taken his ruined overshirt off to press it over his wound. As he spoke he began to get slowly to his feet. “Really a demon. And the stuff in the virus victims' blood really is sulfur.”

“This is nuts,” Mark said. “That's Duane Tanner, I've known him all his life.”

“It's Duane Tanner _now_ ,” I said. “Yesterday it was probably Duane Tanner. A few minutes ago? Demon.” Duane himself picked that moment to groan and try to sit up. He wasn't doing a very good job of it, which was not surprising; being possessed is draining. “Oh God, I feel like crap,” Duane muttered, as Mark hurried to his side.

“You'll be OK,” Dean said. He didn't sound like he cared much, one way or the other, and the callousness of it made me shiver. That was too much like _my_ Dean. I knew it was just that he was frightened for Sam, but I hated it anyway. “Assuming we all survive the zombies.” Mark, Duane and Dr. Lee stared at him, and he shrugged. “What else you want to call them?” he asked, in a tone that suggested he was only being practical.

“We always called them croats,” I put in, just to be contrary. Dean frowned at me, and I was almost puzzled before I remembered this Dean still bothered to care about being needled.

“Speaking of, of _croats_ ,” Dr. Lee said, “shouldn’t we be worried about him turning into one?” She gestured at Sam, who was still holding his shirt to his neck. He winced. “You’re the one who said it spreads through blood.”

“Sam’s not infected.” I was kind of hoping the baldness of the statement would carry some weight, but I wasn’t surprised when she looked skeptical and said, “One more time: how can you possibly know that?”

“I can just tell,” I said. “I can’t really explain how.” Or, well, I could, but it would just convince her I was insane. She might buy demons and croats, having seen them, but I had a feeling _time-traveling fallen angel from the apocalyptic future_ would be a tougher sell. “None of us are infected. We just have to wait until we can make a break for it.”

“The bridge is out,” Dean said. “Or at least there are zombies with guns guarding it.”

“So we go out on foot,” I said. “You can always come back for your precious car later.” Sam’s forehead furrowed at that, and I realized it had been too teasing for someone who’d met Dean less than an hour ago. Dean stared at me for a second before visibly deciding to just let that go for now.

Dr. Lee shook her head. She sounded almost as tired as I felt when she said, “I’m sorry, but some random vagrant’s word is not good enough for me. If Sam’s infected, I can’t let him leave. This…whatever it is, I can’t let it spread further than it has already.”

Dean turned on her, clearly working up to fury, but Sam held out a pacifying hand. “No, Dean, she’s right. We have to be sure. I say we go back to the original plan, wait it out for a few hours. No harm done, right? We can all get some rest.” He offered his brother a shaky smile. “We just have to be sure.” He didn’t add that he had no reason to trust the random vagrant either, and I was obscurely thankful for that. Sam always was the tactful one, when he wasn’t angry.

There wasn’t much to hint at the depth of Sam’s capacity for anger just now, though that capacity was a great deal of what had made him Lucifer’s vessel. And I never knew Sam as a mortal; when he and Dean separated I was still an angel. My fall had begun, but it was not yet far enough advanced to really understand the many ways, good and bad, that humans could feel.

“OK, look,” I said, to break the moment. “I haven’t eaten all day, so if anyone’s got a candy bar or something that’d be great.”

* * *

As it turned out, Dr. Lee had some leftover Chinese in the clinic’s tiny break room and was willing to donate it. Sam went to shut himself in an exam room again while I heated up beef with broccoli and shrimp fried rice. The microwave nearly stumped me; it wasn’t the same model as Bobby’s had been, and we didn’t spare our limited electricity for mere cooking at Chitaqua. I figured it out moments before Dean wandered in, playing casual, to find out what I was doing. I leaned against the wall and watched the plate revolve, ridiculously pleased with myself for having remembered to take the food out of the cardboard containers with their wire handles. _You can’t put metal in the microwave, dude, it’ll blow it up_. I’d have happily eaten it cold, but it seemed churlish to refuse to take advantage of the modern amenities. Dean propped himself on the wall on the other side of the little table and watched me watch my dinner.

“You’re sure Sam doesn’t have it?” Dean asked abruptly, as the countdown blinked its way past thirty seconds.

“Positive,” I said. “He’s fine. He can’t catch it.” My toe tapped restlessly on the tile. The smell of hot food was maddeningly good.

Dean’s eyebrows quirked up and I had to fight down a twitch. My Dean didn’t do that anymore. Even the past Dean Zachariah sent to torment me had spent most of his time angry or morose or appalled, that latter mostly at me. I wondered if I could possibly find Zachariah’s vessel and scare him out of agreeing to house my erstwhile superior. Uriel’s too, for that matter. Not that it would matter if we kept Sam from dying.

Then it occurred to me that there was one vessel I could find unerringly, even now, and I was so engrossed in the possibilities that I almost missed it when Dean said, “I guess there are always some people who’re immune to anything.”

“What? No,” I said. The microwave beeped and I lunged for it, stabbing the door release with hasty fingers. The plate was hot enough to burn but it was only a few feet to the table. “No, Sam’s immune because of the blood.” I let the plate clatter onto the table and dropped into the uncomfortable chair. Dean was staring at me again, but his questions were going to have to wait because I could not remember the last time I'd had beef that wasn't dried. I stabbed two pieces of meat and a stalk of broccoli and shoved the forkful into my mouth.

It was not, in fact, better than sex. But it was pretty damn good. I rolled my eyes in reaction, and Dean hesitated for the barest second, his mouth open to demand what I knew about Sam. In someone else I might have thought I was imagining that pause, but not in Dean. Hell, I knew his expressions better than I knew my own. Then he got back to business.

“Because of what blood?” he asked, clearly suppressing the urge to shake me. I stopped mid-chew, surprised, and he made a get-on-with-it gesture. I chewed and swallowed my mouthful as quickly as I could.

“You don’t know about that yet? What’s the date, anyway?”

“Eighth of December, 2006,” he replied with heavy patience.

“Damn. OK, there’s a thing with Sam. I’ll fill you in, I promise, but I’d rather wait till I can tell you both at once.”

Dean put his hands down on the table in fists and said tightly, “How about you tell me right the hell now, buddy? If there’s something wrong with my brother—”

“Dean.” Wonder of wonders, he stopped talking. “Sam is not in danger right now. I swear. Well, aside from the croats.” I desperately hoped things were still happening close enough to the way they had originally that the croats would be vanishing soon.

I scooped some fried rice into my mouth as Dean regarded me thoughtfully. He was still keyed up, set off by the mere possibility of a threat to Sam, and it was kind of throwing me; even when I first knew him, Dean had not been _quite_ this protective. I had never understood how Dean had come to sell his soul to Hell for Sam’s sake, but watching him now it made more sense. “Look, don’t worry,” I said with my mouth still half full. Dean didn’t look reassured. I gestured at my plate and said, “This is pretty good for small-town Chinese.”

Dean was quiet for long enough that I was afraid he wasn't going to accept the blatant subject change, but then he sighed and sat back a bit in his chair. “It smells OK,” he said.

“Hard to screw up beef with broccoli. It's not a hit-or-miss like General Tso's.”

“Oh, yeah,” Dean said. “With that you're always rollin' the dice.”

“I got spoiled, too,” I said around another mouthful. “First time I had it, it was spectacular. It was this little town in Maine, Waterville of all damn places. But the takeout Chinese was great.”

“What were you doing in Maine?”

“Something really, really stupid,” I said cheerfully, and waved my fork. _Summoning an archangel_ could wait—forever, as far as I was concerned. “So it's the night before, right, and my friend finds out I think I'm not gonna make it through the next day. He asks me what I plan to do with my last night on Earth, and I say _I just thought I'd sit here quietly._ ” I made my voice sound more like it had then, a little slower, more measured. “Well, he wasn't having any of that. He's all, What about booze? Women? And...he knew me pretty well by then and he figured out I was a virgin.”

Dean blinked and looked me up and down incredulously. “Yeah...when was this?”

“'Bout five years ago,” I said, and he choked on, apparently, thin air. “Doesn't matter,” I continued. “So he decides that what he really needs to do is take me to a whorehouse. Which Waterville _also_ has, in addition to great Chinese. We go to this place. You have to understand, I had no clue. I mean I actually used the phrase _den of iniquity._ ” Dean let out a startled chuckle, the sound of it like a knife to my gut. The last time Dean had _laughed_ , my God. I forced my voice to stay casual. “So one of the girls comes up to the table where we're drinking our overpriced beers. She was calling herself Chastity, which, you know, actually pretty funny. He practically had to shove me at her, gives me some money and tells me not to 'order off the menu', and I had _no_ idea what that meant but we go off to her room. And then...sometimes I get flashes about people.” I didn't any more, but I had then, which was close enough. “And we're standing there in her cheap little room, and she's sorta trying to take my tie off, and I tell her that it wasn't her fault her father ran away from her family.”

Dean laughed again, louder this time, and my heart clenched in my chest like a fist. “Did you get thrown out?”

“Not exactly—we ran first,” I said, smiling at him because I was afraid of what my face would do otherwise. “We went and got Chinese food and took it back to where we were staying. Got about three bites into the General Tso's before...well.”

“Before what?” Dean prompted, and I let my smile turn into a grin. “Let's just say he made sure I wasn't gonna die a virgin.”

The next few seconds were frankly fascinating. Dean's face went from slight confusion to understanding to speculation at a rate I was pretty sure no one else (except Sam) would have been able to register. Still, his voice held nothing but mild curiosity when he said, “I thought the Army didn't like that kind of stuff.”

“We weren't in the Army, and besides they would've had to find out.” If I hadn't already been anathema to the Host, they would have shunned me had they known, but not for having sex with a man so much as for _having sex_. The fact that both our bodies had the same genitalia would have mattered not at all; Heaven is utterly indifferent to sexual orientation no matter what the Baptists say. But it’s very concerned about angels fraternizing with the mud monkeys.

Dean thought that over for a second. “Hope you had a good time.”

I grinned wider. “Oh, he was very skilled.” And I had been in no way prepared. Angels feel physical sensations, as a rule, only when they choose to; I had had absolutely no context that would have allowed me to understand what my body (at the time I still thought of it as my vessel) was feeling. There had been several points when I'd honestly thought I was dying. Those memories were as vivid as Hell, if less well-organized. I could replay Dean's voice at will, the way he'd murmured _Just let go, Cas, it'll be OK. I got you_.

It had been a long time since he'd said that. These days he barely spoke when we fucked. And I would never hear him say anything again, because on the extraordinarily slim chance that he hadn't been dead already when whatever happened to me happened, my Dean was most certainly beyond my reach. If I had my way, he'd never really exist at all.

I must have been quiet for too long, because Dean—this Dean, now Dean, before-Hell Dean—said softly, “Doesn't look like it's that great a memory.”

“The memory's fine,” I said, shorter than I intended, and he nodded as if I had confirmed something.

“When did he die?”

Oh.

“That's not a simple question,” I said. “He...lost a lot. It changed him.”

Dean looked at the table, his eyes hooded, and said, “I know a lot of people like that. Kind of goes with my line of work.” He smiled, but it was a small and bitter thing. “First one was my dad.” He paused, and I picked up my cooling plate and leaned back in my chair. “Anyway, you don't strike me as a tie kind of guy,” Dean said. Apparently it was his turn to blatantly change the subject.

I made a questioning eyebrow at him and he waved a hand up and down. “You said the hooker was trying to take your tie off. Having a tough time picturing you with one _on_.”

“Oh, yeah. Used to wear a suit practically 24-7,” I said, collecting another forkful of the fried rice. “Tell you what, the number of times I got tied up with that tie, it's a miracle the damn thing stayed in one piece.” An assisted miracle, in fact.

“Kinky,” Dean said, smirking, and a memory hit me like lightning; he'd said that, in precisely the same tone, the first time he noticed I liked it when he ordered me around in bed. That was back when he still had a sense of humor.

I was saved from trying to think of a response by Mark's voice, calling, “Hey—you guys need to see this.” Dean and I exchanged glances and got up. I took my plate with me, because there was still food on it, and the primary thing I’d learned about food in my time as a mortal was that you _didn’t waste it_.

As we emerged from the break room Sam was coming from his room as well. He had put a bandage over his cut, with remarkable neatness given where it was located. Sam had always been that kind of guy.

“What's up?” Dean asked.

“I went to check out the situation outside, just looked out the window. There were, I dunno, five or six people standing around?” Mark said. “All watching the building, pretty clear they were all turned. Except I looked away and looked back and they were all gone. Too fast to have walked. But they're still gone. I stood there for five minutes and nothing moved.”

The six of us exchanged looks for a second, me trying to conceal cautious optimism. Maybe all the croats were gone after all. They'd gotten whatever information they wanted, or maybe the loss of the demon informant had made them abort the test. We could get the surviving civilians out, and then I could tell Dean and Sam about the future.

“Are you sure?” Dr. Lee asked Mark, and he shrugged.

“No, but I'm hoping. If there aren't any left outside, maybe there aren't any at the bridge either. We can drive outta here.” He paused, and met Sam's eyes. “And you're still here, so I guess your buddy was right about you not being one of 'em.”

“My car's right outside,” said Dr. Lee. Dean nodded. “Ours too.”

“We should go pick up my truck,” Mark said.

From there it took moments to make our plans. We exited the clinic on high alert, Dean and Sam with guns drawn and Mark carrying his shotgun, and went to Dr. Lee's car. She and Mark and Duane got in it, and paced me and Dean and Sam back to the Impala. Dean looked mildly surprised when I climbed into the back seat without comment, but didn't say anything about it, which was good; I was busy trying not to hyperventilate. I read once that smell is the sense that most vividly recalls memories to mind, and the scent of the Impala was burned into my brain like the list of the prophets. As soon as the door opened I was practically assaulted by memories of sitting in this car while Dean drove. I had ridden in it a few times when I was an angel, but once I couldn't fly any longer I became _very_ familiar with it. Dean taught me to drive in it in a series of mall parking lots, late at night. I'd slept in it, eaten in it, had sex in it, spent endless hours in it driving from here to there.

Eventually I'd even learned to sleep through the rattling whenever Dean turned the heat on.

We trailed Dr. Lee to Mark's house, where he went inside to pack a bag. The rest of us got out of our cars and stood uneasily in the street.

“We'll go check the bridge,” Dean offered. “If it's still guarded, we can try to get the cars out another way, I guess. It'll only take us a few minutes to go take a look.” We hadn't seen anyone during the short drive, though the brothers had kept their guns ready to hand.

“If it's open, just keep going,” Dr. Lee said. “We'll be OK to get out.”

Dean and Sam exchanged a dubious look, and Sam said, “We don't want to leave you here.”

“Mark has his gun,” Duane said. “Got another one in the house, too, and I know how to shoot. If there aren't any bad guys in town anymore, we're OK, and if there are you're coming back anyway.” He moved a half-step closer to Dr. Lee, and I realized what was happening; they were uneasy with us because we were outsiders. I couldn't blame them for the reaction; from what I'd gathered, Dean and Sam had killed at least two of the townsfolk, and I'd killed another.

After several minutes of argument, which continued even after Mark emerged from his house, Dean finally agreed. He wasn't happy about it, but it was clear the natives of River Grove wanted to see the last of us as quickly as possible. And there was still no sign of any remaining croats.

The three of us got back in the car as Dr. Lee and Mark formed up their tiny caravan to head for Duane's house to collect some of his things. We drove towards the bridge; they headed in the opposite direction, turned a corner and were gone.

No one spoke until we got near the bridge. “Around this curve is where they had their roadblock set up,” Dean said tightly. He slowed, and we went around at a crawl. There wasn't anyone there. He sped up until he was moving at the speed limit (which was to say, very slowly for him), and in a few moments we were at the bridge and over it. I watched the tension in Dean’s shoulders ease a notch as the Impala’s wheels moved off the bridge and onto regular pavement, and Sam broke into a smile. He half-turned in his seat to address me. “So where are we dropping you, Cas?” All Sam knew was that Dean had offered to give me a ride out of town.

Dean said tightly, “We’re not. At least not until Cas here tells us a few things.”

“What? Dean—”

“No, Sam, it’s fine,” I said. “But I think we should find a place to stop for the night. Some of this stuff is startling.”

“OK,” Sam said slowly, glancing from me to his brother and back. “Sounds like you two know something I don’t.”

“Cas,” Dean announced, “has dreams. About us.”

Sam went still for a long second. “Dreams,” he repeated. “Dreams like…”

“No, actually. It isn’t really dreams.” Dean’s eyes flicked up to glare at me in the rear-view mirror and I hurried on to forestall his objection. “I’m sorry, Dean, but it was easier to say that than try to get into how I really know what I know. We didn’t have enough privacy then.”

“Then how about you get into it now,” Dean said, in a perfectly flat voice that I knew far too well. Interesting that he did it even this early; I’d always kind of thought that voice was a product of the Apocalypse.

“Are you sure you want me to do this while you’re driving?” I tried. He glanced at me in the mirror again and I shrugged. “OK, fine. If I understand correctly, my line is _Come with me if you want to live._ ” I paused. “I’m from the future.”

At first neither of them spoke, but I could see enough of Dean’s expression to realize he didn’t believe me, and Sam looked frankly incredulous. “Right,” Dean said heavily. “I’ve seen that one and you don’t look like Arnie.”

“He does kinda look like Reese,” Sam said. He was still turned in his seat, and he moved his hand from the seat-back down to where I couldn’t see it. Closer to a weapon, in case I turned out to be dangerous after all.

“Is he the good guy? You never did show me those movies.”

Dean’s hands twisted on the steering wheel. “You keep talking like you know me. Know us. So, what, we’re friends in the future?”

I sat back in my seat. “That…that’s not a simple question,” I said, and watched until I saw him get it. “The story I told you, that was five years ago for me. For you, it’s about three years in the future—a little less.”

“You’re saying you’re from 2014,” Sam said. He sounded extremely skeptical, and I couldn’t blame him.

“October second,” I agreed.

They thought that over briefly. “So how did you get here?” Sam asked.

I tipped my head back, looking out the rear window at the stars visible through the patchy clouds. “I have no idea. I woke up in the middle of the street maybe a minute before you ran into me.” The list of things that could have done that was very, very short, and I couldn’t think of a being on it that would have any interest in saving me. Unless it was Lucifer, trying to punish me by making me live through his triumph _again_ , but if so why had he sent me back to before he was out of his cage? (He had been so angry with me when I’d refused to help him. _I’ll die first_ , I said, and he replied, _I suppose you will_ , and smiled while his Grace crackled with fury.) “I was…there was a fight. It was a trap—the place should have been _crawling_ with croats, and it was once we were too far in to escape. Everyone was dead or dying. I passed out, and when I woke up I was here. I’m still not sure this isn’t what I’m dreaming while I bleed to death.”

“So you know all this stuff about Croatoan because…” Sam trailed off, looking appalled.

“Because where I came from, it’s taken over the world,” I confirmed. I was so fucking tired, and it wasn’t the usual tired of watching the world end while Dean died by inches. “Look, it’s a long story, and I don’t think it’s a good idea to tell it while we’re on the road. I _swear_ to you I’m not trying to be cryptic, here, but some of this stuff is gonna freak you out and I don’t want to die if Dean drives into a tree.”

“Cas,” Dean began, warning clear in his tone, but Sam overrode him. “Dean, come on. We can wait an hour.” I gave the younger Winchester a grateful look.

“Get a room at the first motel you see,” I said. “Once we’re there you can, I don’t know, handcuff me to the bed till I talk.”

“Don’t think I won’t,” Dean muttered. _Kinky_ , I thought, but all things considered it was probably best I didn’t say it.

After that I got as comfortable as I could in the back seat and dozed off. I wasn’t properly asleep, but I couldn’t make sense of Sam and Dean’s low voices in the front and my sense of time lurched erratically; it might have been five minutes later or several hours when the comforting rumble of the Impala’s engine cut off and Sam said my name. I struggled back to full awareness with some effort and climbed out of the car.

Sam and Dean pulled their duffel bags out of the trunk and I trailed them into the room, which had both a kitchenette and a tiny seating area with a couch. Dean dropped his bag on the bed nearest the door and started rummaging through it; after a second he came up with a pair of handcuffs. “OK, Cas, you gotta hit the head?”

“Seriously?” Sam asked. I just rolled my eyes.

“I’m good for now,” I said. “You’re lucky these beds have headboards.”

Dean jangled the cuffs meaningfully. I sat on the other bed and held out my left hand so he could snap the bracelet around it. He threaded the other one around one of the uprights and clicked it shut. “Now you're going to talk,” he said briskly, and sat on the other bed with a bounce and an expression of expectant attention. Sam pulled over one of the kitchenette chairs and leaned back in it with his feet on the edge of Dean's bed. I took a second to arrange myself against the headboard, my free hand on the back of my neck and my legs crossed at the ankles, and drew a deep breath.

“The entity you call Yellow Eyes is the demon Azazel,” I began. “In 1973, he killed your father and made a deal with your mother for John's return.”

I sketched out the details of Mary Winchester's deal, and why Azazel had wanted access to Sam's nursery. At that Sam looked sick; Dean was quietly furious. I told them about Samuel Colt's gigantic devil's trap and the gun that was the key. I told them that Azazel was planning to open the gate to Hell at the center of the trap, and how he would take Sam and the other special children to Cold Oak to fight each other.

“One of them is a boy named Jake. He's the one who stabs Sam.”

Dean held up a hand. “Wait. Stabs Sam? When is this supposed to happen again?”

“I don't know for certain. You make your deal on May second, so it's a few days before that. Do you know about the crossroads demons yet?”

“A deal— _I_ make a crossroads deal?” Dean said. I nodded. “Why the hell would I do that?”

“Because it's the only way to get Sam back,” I said, as gently as I could manage. “Jake stabs him to death, Dean.”

Sam drew a sharp breath that wasn't quite a gasp, and Dean turned to him. “Come on, Sam, are we buying this?”

I sighed and said, “Look, just let me finish, OK? There'll be time for believing me later.” Dean hesitated, then nodded. “You figure out where the devil’s gate is in time to get to it, but Jake opens it anyway. Demons escape, hundreds of them, but so does your father.” At that, Dean froze where he sat and I cocked my head at him curiously. Sam got out of his chair in a hurry and went to sit next to his brother, one hand on Dean's shoulder. After a second Dean collected himself, but he sounded winded when he asked, “My dad gets out of Hell?”

“Yes.”

“Oh man,” Dean said. “Oh, God.”

“Dean,” Sam began, but Dean got to his feet and took a few steps away. “Just give me a second, Sam,” he said roughly. He was deliberately standing so that neither of us could see his face. He stayed that way for most of a minute, his hands in fists at his sides. Sam didn’t seem to be quite as stunned, but then he hadn’t been the one John condemned himself for.

When Dean turned, his eyes were bright with tears he was barely holding back. Sam and I both carefully ignored it.

“Azazel comes to the opening of the gate to gloat.” I let myself smile, though I was sure it wasn’t a pretty expression. “Putting himself near the Colt, well, it turns out bad for him.”

Sam leaned forward where he sat, his face suddenly intent. “We get him. You mean we get him.”

“Dean shoots him,” I said. This time it was Dean who sat and put a reassuring hand on his brother’s back and Sam’s turn to look overwhelmed. “Your father moves on, since he’s free to. And after that…after that doesn’t matter, because we’re going to change it.” Both of them looked at me, protest forming on their faces. “We have to let the gate open or your father can’t escape. But that is _all_ that has to happen. I know where the special kids will be taken; we can save Sam and Dean won’t have to make a deal.” I rubbed my chest absently and fished in my pocket for the pill bottle. Dean and Sam watched me with identical looks of skepticism as I tapped a single pill out.

“OK, look, Cas,” Sam said, clearly searching for a phrasing that wouldn’t offend. “This is a little much to deal with.”

“You mean you think I’m nuts,” I said, and shrugged as I tossed the pill into my mouth. The bitter coating made me grimace. “That’s OK. I know a couple of things you can check out, if that’ll convince you. I’m not asking for your faith yet, but Sam, Dean…” I took a deep breath. Sincerity was not something I did much anymore; cynicism and snark were so much easier. But for this, I needed all the sincerity I could muster. I could hear my voice changing, falling into its old cadences. “If you don’t believe anything else about me, believe this: _I want to help_. I watched the world end once because I waited too long to do the right thing. I _will not_ do that twice. Before I go through it again I’ll—”

I stopped, closed my mouth, opened it again. “You’ll what?” Dean asked.

“I’ll eat a bullet,” I said, hearing the words as if I hadn’t known I was going to say them. I didn’t want to die—but I wanted to watch a repeat of Dean’s slow destruction even less.

They didn’t say anything. Really, what do you say to that?

Finally, Sam said, “You’re not going to tell us that story right now, are you?”

“Yeah, no. It’s not gonna happen, no reason to worry about it.”

“Why do I get the feeling this ain’t gonna be as easy as you want us to think, Cas?” Dean said sharply.

I could not help it; I laughed in his face. “Who said anything about easy, Dean? Simple, sure, we just need to keep Sam alive. But this isn't just changing the past, it's changing _destiny_.” The only reason I had _any_ hope was because of Zachariah; by sending Dean from 2009 to my future, he’d rendered it…invalid, and me a variable capable of making changes that would stick. I couldn’t understand time travel anymore, not really, but some concepts were still within my grasp, and that was one. “It isn't going to be easy. You two are important to some very powerful beings, and they will do anything they can to make sure you play your parts.” I tried to run my hands through my hair and my left came up short against the handcuff. I'd almost forgotten it was there. “Will you take this damn thing off me? I want to take a shower.”

There was a brief pause, and then Sam said, “Sure.” Dean's expression was annoyed, but he didn't protest as Sam dug a handcuff key out of his own duffel and unlocked me. “You want to wash your stuff?” Sam asked. “We're about due for a laundry run, but Dean's got a pair of sweatpants that you can wear to sleep in.” He smiled a little. “I'd lend you something of mine but I think my stuff would fall right off you.”

“Sounds great,” I said, and I even meant it. I pulled my boots off and stood, dropping my jacket on the bed, while Dean pulled the pants out of his bag. He handed them to me without a word and I nodded in return.

In the bathroom I locked the door behind me and started the water running as I stripped. Dean liked lukewarm showers, but I always turned mine up as hot as whatever motel we were in could provide, until motels became a thing of the past. This place had the thermostat set pretty high, and even decent water pressure, and I stood under the spray motionless for at least five minutes before I realized I was crying.

It wasn't something I'd done often. Angels don't cry, and once I was mortal I preferred to laugh at everything. (It pissed Dean off, which was kind of the point; at least when he was pissed he was reacting.) But I stood in the little motel bathtub, hot water pounding on my face, and cried.

After a while I had to lean on the wall, cheap white tile slick under my hands. Then that wasn't enough so I sat and drew up my knees and buried my face in my hands while the water pounded on the top of my head. Dean was dead, I knew he was dead, and at the same time he was _here_ , and all I had to do was make sure that this Dean, in all his flawed perfection, never became my Dean. All I had to do was defy the plans of Heaven and Hell at once—me, Cas, the useless, drugged-out, sex-addled fuckup, who spent two months benched by mere broken bones. Who Dean couldn't rely on anymore, even though he did, and damn him for asking if I was coming, as if I'd have let him go on that last run alone.

Dean's last run, not mine, when it should have been both or neither. I had never intended to come back from that trip any more than Dean had; I knew what he was doing from the moment he told us his “plan”. He'd meant to kill his little brother, and then turn the Colt on himself. And if he had to spend my life, and Risa's life, and the lives of everyone we took, well, my Dean did what was necessary. I didn't even know if he'd gotten his shot, and I didn't care, because he was _dead_ and I wasn't, he had died without me.

I didn't know if I could forgive him for that. Everything else, but not that.

I could feel my pulse pounding in my wrists and neck and face. I couldn’t get enough air. Dean called my name over and over and it had to be my imagination because he sounded concerned. I leaned on the side of the bathtub and pressed my face into the wall, beating my fist against the bottom of the tub until it began to feel bruised. My own voice rang in my ears, whining between sobs.

On the very fringes of my awareness, something splintered. I didn’t care. It could be croats or demons or Lucifer himself, so long as whatever it was killed me before I fucked things up again. “Jesus Christ,” Dean said in breathless shock at the disgusting spectacle I was presenting; I wanted to sit up, grin at him, provoke him until he pinned me to the wall, but I couldn’t and it didn’t matter anyway. It wasn’t really Dean; he wasn't there, I just wanted him to be, and if he were there he wouldn't have time to wait around for me to get my act together.

Except then a hand fell onto my shoulder. I jerked in surprise. “Cas,” Dean said, sounding very calm. “You're boiling yourself like a lobster, dude. You need to get out. OK?”

“Fuck off,” I snarled, or tried to, but the effect was ruined when my voice broke in the middle. The water ran into my eyes and I screwed them tight shut. I couldn't look at him.

“You can't sit in the bathtub all night. Sam's gonna be back with food soon and he'll need to take a shower too. Maybe not so hot, though, it's like July in Mississippi in here.” I heard him move, and the squeak of metal on metal, and the water cut off. The sound of my panting echoed off the tiles, almost covering Dean shifting again.

“C'mon, Cas. At least put pants on, huh? You'll feel better.”

I choked on a laugh that hurt more than the tears had and opened my eyes to glare at him. “If you think pants are going to solve my problems,” I started, but the look on his face was too much. He was _worried_ about me. Trying to hide it, because my Father forbid Dean Winchester care about anyone who wasn't Sam, but worried.

About _me_.

I closed my eyes again and slumped against the wall, trying to at least get control of my breathing. He let me for a little while, quiet, but as soon as my breaths started to even out Dean said, “OK. Now you're gonna get up and dry off and put the damn pants on. Got it?”

“Yes,” I said, an automatic response, and then I was stuck with it.

Dean pulled a towel off the rack for me while I climbed to my feet, feeling like I'd been beaten all over. He handed me the terrycloth over his shoulder and edged out of the bathroom with his back carefully turned while I dried off. My boxers were just as threadbare as they'd been when I took them off, but clean enough to be wearable, so I put them back on and pulled Dean's sweatpants over them. I toweled my hair till it stopped actively dripping and stuffed the towel back into the rack. Then I leaned on the counter for a second, head bowed. _Soldier up, Cas_ , I thought again, bleakly. I could do this. I had to.

* * *

When I came out of the bathroom Dean was sitting at the kitchenette table, elaborately pretending to be interested in something on Sam's laptop. “Feeling better?” he asked, and then looked at me and stopped cold, staring at my chest. I glanced down but didn't see anything out of the ordinary.

“What?” I asked.

Dean waved a hand at me. “What's that? A ward or something?”

“Oh,” I said, padding over to the other chair. “No, this is a...it banishes...well, beings you will hopefully never meet.”

Dean raised a skeptical eyebrow. “That doesn't explain why someone carved it into your chest, Cas.”

“It has to be drawn in blood.” He just stared at me, and I sighed. “They had you—him—future you. There were five of them guarding you, and I knew going in I couldn't get them all. I couldn't think of a better way to carry the sigil with me. One of my team had to do the cutting, the angle was all wrong to do it myself. I killed one and the rest ganged up on me. Once they were all close enough I hit the sigil and _poof_. Worked like a charm.” Of course I'd gone poof too, and spent six days in a Louisiana hospital in a coma so deep they thought I was brain-dead, but Dean didn't need to know that _. My team_ had been Bobby. He'd carved the sigil with a steady hand and a grimace of distaste.

Waking up to discover I couldn't fly had been unpleasant, but at least Dean had been happy to hear from me when I managed to get my hands on a phone.

“Your guys let you go in alone?” Dean sounded deeply disapproving.

“I had the best shot at it,” I said, shrugging. The only shot; even in his prime and walking, Bobby Singer could never have been anything but a very small speed bump for an angel in hand-to-hand.

“They still could’ve given you some backup.”

“They did. They went in and got you out once I dealt with the guards.” I leaned back in the chair and contemplated putting my feet on the table, but there wasn’t much room for it. “You got a drink in this place?”

Dean gave me a level stare and said, “Oxy and liquor ain’t exactly the breakfast of champions.”

“And if I were trying to be a champion that would be relevant,” I said, faking ease. “Plus? Not breakfast time. Unless Sam’s bringing back pancakes.”

“He’s not,” Dean said. “Look, it's none of my business what you drink—”

“Damn right it isn’t.”

“—but if we’re gonna work together I have to be able to count on you,” Dean went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “Bad enough you’re on heavy pain meds. You can’t have our backs if you’re wasted.”

_I’ve got no use for guys I can’t trust to have my back_. I couldn’t count how many times he’d said that to me, one way or another. I _tsk_ ed and snapped my fingers. “Didn't realize you were planning on killing something tonight! My bad. Maybe I should get dressed.”

“Don't be a dick,” Dean said, scowling. “You know what I mean.”

I stood, a little more abruptly that I meant to, and stretched. “I'm gonna turn in,” I said.

“Cas, dammit. Sam'll be back with the food any minute.” Dean's eyes flicked over my torso. “You look like you could use it.”

“Yeah, you know, short rations in the zombie apocalypse,” I said brightly. As if on cue, the doorknob rattled and Sam pushed into the room, carrying a pizza box in one hand and a bag with a couple of two-liters in the other. He looked between me and Dean uncertainly; the tension in the room was all but palpable.

“Uh...Cas, I hope you like pepperoni and sausage?” Sam said. “Or you can have some from my half.”

I dropped back into my chair and smiled at Sam. “Thanks. So nice of you to take my preferences into account.”

He looked even more puzzled, but all he said was, “No problem.” Dean yanked the pizza box out of his brother's hand and slapped it onto the table as if it had offended him.

I ate two pieces of pizza, fending off Sam's conversational gambits as well as I could. Dean sulked. When I was done eating, feeling more full than I had in quite a while, I stripped the blanket off of the bed Dean had claimed—he protested, but it was halfhearted so I ignored it—and headed for the sofa.

“You can take the bed,” Sam offered.

“I'm the shortest,” I said, arranging the blanket. “This couch would kill you, not much better for Dean. Besides—I've had worse.” The thing actually wasn't as comfortable as my bed (I invested a lot of effort in that bed), but I cocooned myself in the blanket and it was comfortable enough.

I pulled a fold over my head to block the light and fell asleep almost instantly, real deep sleep. If I dreamed, I don't remember. That's about all I hope for anymore.

I woke in the morning to an empty room and for a second I almost panicked. I clawed one arm free of my blanket before I focused on Sam's laptop, still sitting on the kitchenette table.

Sam came back, bearing coffee and pastries, while I was in the bathroom rediscovering the joys of modern plumbing. When I came out he handed me a cup and watched without comment while I doctored it with all the sugar he'd brought—I don't like coffee very much, really, but I’ve endured more unpleasantness for a useful chemical. As I stirred it occurred to me that I'd neglected to snag any uppers from the doctor's office, having concentrated on painkillers, so I'd have to rely on caffeine pills and coffee for the foreseeable future. Not a fatal mistake, but annoying.

Ever concerned with his manners, Sam waited until I'd drunk some of the coffee before he spoke. “Dean's doing the laundry,” he said, settling himself in one of the kitchenette chairs. “He'll be a few hours. I was thinking you might run over things for me while he's gone. You said you knew some things we could check, to verify your story.”

I sat back on the couch, the blanket draped over my shoulders, and wrapped my hands around the comforting heat of the coffee cup. “Making sure I’m not crazy after all,” I said, and grinned when Sam looked uncomfortable. “It’s fine, Sam. I’m well aware I’m improbable.” He shrugged and said, “You kind of are. I mean, no offense.”

“None taken, I assure you. I assume you called Bobby.” Bobby was another person I hadn’t failed yet. Him and Ellen and Joanna; I was even pretty sure the Roadhouse was still standing.

Sam took a second to process that. “Last night,” he said. “You really do know us.”

I shrugged one shoulder and drank more of my coffee. “I know Dean better, but yes.  Bobby's never heard of me, of course.”

Sam studied me for long enough that most people would have been uncomfortable with it. I don’t do uncomfortable, at least not over eye contact, so I just worked on the coffee and let him stare. “I get the feeling there’s a lot you haven’t told us,” he said when he was bored with that. “Or rather, that you’re not _planning_ to tell us.”

“You’re right,” I said affably. “There are a whole lot of things that you don’t need to know. They aren’t going to happen, they’d only make you unhappy to hear, and frankly I don’t want to think about them. So no, I’m not going to tell you.”

“Maybe you should let us decide what makes us unhappy,” Sam said, sounding a little sharp.

I sighed and swirled the coffee around in my cup. “OK, here’s one: did you know time in Hell runs a hundred times faster than it does here? So your father's been in Hell for...what, ten months? For him it's been a hundred years, give or take.” Sam paled; he and his father had never gotten along well, but they'd loved each other nonetheless. I almost felt bad about springing that piece of information on him. “If it becomes relevant, I’ll tell you. But not otherwise. Now do you want to take notes?”

Sam eyed me. I gazed back through the last wisps of steam from my cup. Finally he shrugged, though I could tell the argument wasn’t actually over. He’d bring it up again. Well, let him. I can be stubborn too.

I talked for nearly three hours, giving Sam everything I could remember of things that had happened to them, and would happen between now and the disaster at Cold Oak. Even when I was still an angel I hadn’t known everything, only those events that were directly relevant to Sam’s death and Dean’s deal, and much of what I did know I couldn’t explain—couldn’t even properly remember anymore, without my Grace to help me comprehend it. But for the first year or so after Lucifer rose, Dean had spent a lot of time talking about hunts he and Sam had taken as long as those hunts didn’t involve Azazel, or Lilith, or Lucifer.

Sam played me like I was a witness. I didn't mind; it drew out details I hadn't realized I still knew, and letting him pry and question every little thing helped make the story solidify in his mind. Every time he thought he caught a logical inconsistency that I was able to answer, it got him that much closer to believing me. Dean came back as we neared the end of the process; he dumped the bags of clean clothes and sat on the other end of the sofa to listen silently. I tried not to watch for his reactions but I kept being distracted.

Finally Sam’s fingers stilled on his keyboard. He stared at the screen like it was going to give him the answer to everything.

“I could still be crazy,” I said, and grinned at him when he looked at me sharply. “I’m not, but if a few more days of thinking it will make you feel better, be my guest.”

“Yeah, no,” Sam said. “You know too much about us. Time travel's still kind of hard to buy, but you have something going on.”

“Something creepy,” Dean said, in a tone of helpful explanation. He leaned back and draped his arm over the back of the couch. “So what now?” His fingers were inches from my shoulder.

“I think we should try tracking down the other kids like me,” Sam said. “We have some more names now, some better idea what to look for. We might actually be able to work up something useful.”

“Whoa, Sam, no,” Dean said. “I've been thinking about this, I think we should just lay low. You know? At least for a while. It'd be safer.”

“Safer?” Sam repeated incredulously. “Since when do we care about safe, Dean? This is our chance to get _ahead_ of the bastard instead of playing catch-up!”

“This whole thing is spinning out of control. All right? You're immune to some weirdo demon virus, we've got Mr. Come-With-Me-If-You-Want-To-Live here telling us about the freakin' future, and I don't even know what the hell anymore.”

“Speaking of me,” I said, before Sam could reply, “I assume my clothes are clean?”

“Yeah,” Dean said, but he was still staring at his brother. “In the green bag.”

“Great.” I dug my clothes out and went into the bathroom to change. I had to lean on the door to keep it closed; Dean had splintered the latch breaking in the night before. So I caught snatches of the conversation (or argument) Sam and Dean were having, Sam advocating for trying to find and warn the rest of the special children and Dean stubbornly repeating that we needed to get under cover for a little while. I stayed in there as long as I reasonably could, but then I heard Dean say something about their father and decided I needed to be further away.

When I came out, Sam stopped talking in the middle of a sentence. They both stared at me. I grinned. “Thought I'd take a walk,” I said.

“Great idea,” Dean said tightly. “You got a watch? No, of course not. Just...give us an hour or so, OK? My brother and I need to _talk_.”

Sam pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and lobbed it to me. “We'll call you.” He didn't sound any happier. They both watched me in silence as I shrugged my jacket on and headed for the exit.

For just a moment I was tempted to lurk outside with my ear to the door, but I shook off the urge; my feelings about John Winchester were mixed, at best, and if they were going to discuss him I was pretty sure I didn’t want to hear it. John had never meant to damage his sons, but he’d done it nonetheless. ( _I know something about deadbeat dads_ , Dean said, and tossed me the bottle of aspirin. He didn’t often mention his father to me, and even through my hangover I could tell the memory pained him.)

Outside it was only cool, the mild winter of the Pacific Northwest. Lacking the money to go in search of coffee, or anything stronger, I just wandered down to the end of the motel building; there was a collection of ancient picnic tables, their wood grey with age like the rafters of my cabin. I climbed onto one and arranged myself in lotus position, on the off-chance that meditation would help me decide what to do next.

It very rarely works that way, but I live in hope.

I did manage to actually meditate, which was nice, but when the shrill of Sam's phone startled me back to awareness I was no closer to a good plan. I had no idea how Azazel had stolen Sam to take him to Cold Oak, and thus no good strategy to prevent it; the best I was coming up with was locking Sam in Bobby's panic room for a few weeks, and I had a feeling Sam wouldn't appreciate that. I'd talk him into it if I didn't have a better idea by then.

“We're done,” Dean said when I answered the phone, and for a second I heard the words in another context entirely, until he continued, “You can come back.” He sounded unhappily triumphant, as if he'd made his point but not in a way he liked.

I was generally of the opinion that a victory was a victory, but Dean had always been a little more complex than that.

“Be right there,” I said, and a minute later knocked on the door, having neglected to take a key with me. It had been a long time since I had to worry about keys.

Sam opened the door for me, looking pissed and more than a little freaked out. Dean clapped his hands together and said, “OK! Who wants lunch?”

Sam made a face and muttered something about hollow legs, but nonetheless we went to lunch. The town, which I learned was called Sidewinder, had a diner I would have _sworn_ I'd been in before; even the waitress seemed familiar. On the other hand, I ate at a lot of diners with Dean, before the concept of a restaurant vanished. It had been long enough since I was actually in one that my sense of familiarity could be way off.

The waitress in question was young, and cute if not stunning. Dean flirted with her relentlessly from the moment she came to the table. I tried not to care. He was just letting off the tension of his fight with Sam, and it wasn't like the two of us were remotely exclusive, and besides this was not a Dean I had any claim on. That much got me through ordering, at least. After that I just sort of gritted my teeth and talked as little as possible. Sam wasn’t contributing much to the conversation either, though, so it ended up being Dean monologuing about the food and occasionally trying to draw one or the other of us out.

Then we went back to the motel. Sam sat and sullenly flipped open his laptop; Dean turned on the TV and started browsing through channels in search of something to watch that he didn’t hate. “Ha!” he exclaimed. “Cas, come over here.” I drifted over until I could see the screen, on which a man was muttering “What the hell?” while he tried to start a stalled truck.

“You said you never saw this, right?”

“It doesn’t look familiar.” Wind blew, and electricity arced into the side of the vehicle.

“Great. They’re doing a marathon, but we only need to watch the first two. The third one sucks.”

On the television the man got out of his truck and ran, as another man, naked and heavily muscled, rose slowly from a crouch. “Sit down,” Dean demanded, and I did, carefully not right next to him.

I finally figured out what film we were watching about half an hour in, when Kyle Reese looked at Sarah Connor and said, “Come with me if you want to live.” I turned to stare at Dean and he smirked at me. “Sammy was right, you look way more like him than like Schwarzenegger,” he said.

“Thanks, I think,” I said.

“Don't mention it,” Dean said, still smirking.

“Yeah, I won't.”

That said, it was a pretty good movie, even with Dean next to me making fun of it—OK, especially with Dean making fun of it. Depressing, though; I wasn't in the mood for being told that I couldn't change the future. As the credits rolled and commercials played over them, I said, “So if I'm Reese, and Sam's John, I think that makes you Sarah.”

From his place at his computer, Sam choked on surprised laughter. Dean turned a wounded look on me that was only half-faked. “Come on!” he said. “Sam's way more of a girl than I am. I mean the hair alone.”

“Sam's the one we're going to save. That makes him John Connor.” At the word “save”, Dean winced, just barely. ( _Dad told me once I’d have to either save Sam or kill him. Guess we know which one it's gonna be, huh?_ He paused. _I got a lead on the Colt. A good lead. I'm going tomorrow._ A longer pause and then, _You’d better stay here_.) I ignored the look on his face and continued, “Sorry, Dean, but you're Sarah.”

For a second Dean looked mutinous, but then his expression shifted and he grinned. “Whatever. She killed the Terminator and in the second one she's a total badass. I could do worse.”

So we watched the second one, Sam unbending enough to put in the occasional comment of his own. I liked the ending much better, even with the Terminator being melted down. It allowed the possibility of change. _No fate but what we make_ —that’s a message I can get behind, these days. Considering what fate did to the world, I have to say I don’t care for it.

When the second movie was over, Dean leaned back and craned his neck to address his brother. “Hey, what d’you say we go find a bar with a pool table?”

“I’m right in the middle of something, Dean, can you wait an hour?”

“It’s better to get going early if we’re gonna hustle, Sammy.”

“Don’t call me that,” Sam said, though it sounded automatic. “Take Cas. He can hold down the fort, right?” He glanced at me and I shrugged and nodded, trying not to smile. Dean turned and scanned me dubiously. “It’s easier with someone to be the sober guy,” Dean said, clearly still talking to Sam.

“Seriously, stuff to do here. We’ve got a couple days of cash yet if you don’t want to go alone,” Sam said. Dean sighed.

“No, fine, I’ll take Cas. I can hustle some small-towners by myself.”

“You did teach me how to do this,” I put in as Dean got to his feet. He stopped for a second and then sighed and ran a hand through his hair.

“Of course I did,” he said.

“There you go,” Sam said, still intent on his computer. “Go on. Call me when you find a place and if I get done early enough I’ll join you.”

*

Dean grumbled some more, but a few minutes later we set out. We could see neon from the room door and headed for it. As soon as we were inside I could see we'd hit paydirt; the place had three tables, none of which were in use. Dean went to the bar while I staked out a booth. He came back with beers and set them down with a flourish.

“OK, how do you want to play this?” he asked. I blinked in mild surprise before I realized—he was testing me.

“Drink a beer or two,” I said promptly. “Then play each other. I'll go for the high end of mediocre and you play just well enough to beat me. Once we get some decent prospects in here, I'll get sick of being beaten and you can rope them in. Let me know if you need me to come be the sober one.”

Dean took a long pull from his beer. “If you're gonna do that, you have to actually be sober,” he said.

I rolled my eyes at him. “I know that. Don't worry. I know where my limits are.”

“Yeah, I'll bet.” He eyed me, and then shrugged. “We'll get some food, that'll help.”

We drank our beers and ate the onion rings Dean ordered. A pair of women—girls, really, barely old enough to get into the bar—had started playing casually and not very well at the far pool table, so Dean and I left the center one empty for our setup game.

It's a challenge, doing something you're good at but not as well as you could do it. And I am very good at pool; I learned the skill before I was fully fallen, and it stuck. It's not just a matter of failing to make the shots. You have to miss them in the same way that you would if you weren't as good as you are.

Dean let me break for the first game. Tempting as it was, I didn't just run the table; there'd be time for showing off later. Instead I just made my first two shots and muffed the easy third, making sure to give Dean a significant glance before I did. He cocked an eyebrow but bent to his own shot without comment.

Halfway through our third game, three guys wandered up to claim the middle pool table. One of them had his own cue in a case, and Dean and I shared a look that translated best to _Yahtzee_. Guys with their own cues either are very, very good...or just think they are, and I knew where my money would go if I had to bet. I missed another easy shot and muttered, “Fuck,” not quite under my breath. 

“Chill out, Cas,” Dean said easily. “It's just a game.”

I glared at him, backing away from the table, and said, “Screw you.” The three guys glanced at us and away. Dean took his next few shots rapidly and a little carelessly, making it look like one of them went in through sheer luck. As he sank the eight I huffed in exasperation and went to put my cue in the rack. “OK, I'm done having my ass kicked,” I said.

“Hey, it's not my fault you suck at this,” Dean said, in a tone that would have been sweet if not for the words. I shoved the cue into place with slightly more force than was necessary.

“I'm done,” I said shortly.

“Come on! I don't wanna play solo,” Dean protested.

“Well I don't want to play at all,” I said, and stomped over to our table. My half-finished beer was warm by then. I drank it anyway.

“Cas,” Dean began. One of the pool players overrode him.

“Wanna join us?” It was the guy with the cue. He sounded eager. Dean's lips quirked before he turned around.

From there it might as well have been scripted. Dean lost a game, then won one with a series of “lucky” shots. I could see Cue Guy getting more confident as Dean started putting on the first hints of a slur in his words—he wasn't drinking as much as he appeared to be.

“Good game,” Cue Guy said, which was bullshit. Dean shrugged, blatantly faking modesty. “You want to go again, make things a little more interesting this time?” Before replying Dean looked over at me and I shook my head, making the expression that belonged to phrases like _Stop it or we will_. Dean smirked at me and turned back to Cue Guy, who had one eyebrow hiked at the byplay.

“How interesting?”

“Well, I got a hundred bucks,” Cue Guy said.

Dean pretended to think it over before he grinned and said, “Sure.”

Cue Guy was just breaking when someone slid into the booth next to me. It was one of the girls from the far pool table. She was shortish and cute, with a pleasantly oval face and large green eyes that reminded me of Dean's. She set a shot on the table in front of me; I looked down at it and back at her inquiringly. She smiled and said, “Figured you deserved something for the evening's entertainment. I'd buy your buddy one too but he probably doesn't want to throw off his game.” She was speaking just loud enough for me to hear her over the buzz of conversation in the room.

“What entertainment would that be?”

She shrugged. “Watching Cliff get suckered,” she said casually.

“And you'd be OK with that?”

“Oh, you bet. Cliff's a jerk, he deserves it.” She picked up her own drink, which was violently pink and had an umbrella and a skewer of fruit in it and sugar crusted around the rim of the glass; I was mildly impressed that she’d talked the bartender of a place like this into making it for her. “Just drink it. I'm not gonna take it as confirmation if you'd rather I didn't.”

I considered only briefly before picking up the shot. It was whiskey—pretty good whiskey. It made me wonder if Chuck would find the stashed bottle I'd been saving for Dean's birthday, and then how long the camp would last, without Dean or me or Risa. I carefully stopped wondering.

“Thanks,” I said when the burn faded. “I'm Cas.”

“Angie,” she replied. “You two in town long?”

“Tonight, maybe tomorrow.” I didn't have any solid idea of how long Dean and Sam planned to stay here, but they'd want to find a new job sooner rather than later.

“Too bad,” Angie said, and leaned into my side. “Have to take my entertainment while I can get it, I guess.” We watched in companionable silence while Dean narrowly lost by screwing up a shot he should have made. “Nice one,” Angie murmured, and I nodded. Dean deliberately didn't look at me as he and Cliff negotiated a second game. I fidgeted and glared as my part required. They were well underway when Angie sat up, twisted on the bench seat, and said seriously, “How about I distract you so you don't notice till it's too late?” Her face was solemn but there was a hint of amusement around her eyes.

“That depends on how you were planning to distract me,” I said, with equal gravity. She put her hand on my shoulder.

“Is your friend gonna punch me if I kiss you?”

I laughed and said, “No.”

She cocked her head and said, “Huh. But you kind of wish he would, looks like.” I shrugged, because I was not going to get into that. She studied me for another second, and then said, “What the hell,” and leaned in.

Her lips were soft and tasted sweet, from her drink or her lip-color or both, and though the kiss was almost chaste she ran one hand under the hem of my shirt and skated her fingers over my ribs, finding the sensitive spot as if she knew it was there. I drew a sharp breath that wasn’t quite a gasp and wrapped one arm around her waist.

In truth, it hadn’t exactly been a long time, even by my standards. The arrival of past-Dean had disrupted my plans, that last day before we went to Jackson County, but my Dean had been spending more time than usual in my cabin the last few weeks. Even now, he always made sure I got off too, one of his few remaining points of honor. So it wasn’t like I was looking at any kind of long dry spell.

On the other hand I’d almost died since the last time I’d looked up to find Dean leaning silently in the doorway. And Angie was a very good kisser; it took some effort to pay enough attention to the pool players to catch it when Dean said loudly, “Come on, man, gimme a shot—double or nothing!”

I pulled away from Angie and scrambled over her out of the booth. She pouted convincingly. I got to Dean’s side in a couple of long steps and took him by the arm. “What are you doing?” I demanded, with my voice low enough for Cliff to believe I didn’t want him to hear it. “We don’t even have a room yet, dammit.”

“Cas, cut it out, I got this,” Dean said. The slur was much more evident now and he squinted at me as if he were having trouble focusing.

“For fuck’s sake, Dean, you’re weaving.” I looked at Cliff, who was wearing a lazy grin I took an instant dislike to. “Come on, don’t you think he’s a little out of it to be making bets?”

“Hey, it was his idea,” Cliff said. “And we already shook on it, so I’m afraid I’m gonna have to insist.” The grin had a nasty edge that made me think Angie was right—it wasn’t just that Cliff was willing to take Dean’s money, he was ready to enjoy it.

“Damn it,” I muttered. “Look, you’ve got, what, two hundred bucks already? I will buy you a drink, whatever, just let this go.”

Dean shook off my hold and said, too loud, “Screw off, Cas. Tell ya what, buddy, let’s go for five hundred.” As he spoke he fished cash out of his pocket and slapped it down on the table.

“Done,” Cliff said, and smirked at me.

I grabbed Dean again as he picked up his cue and wrenched it out of his hand. He met my eyes, startled and questioning, and I dropped a hint of a wink before I turned to face Cliff. “I’ll play,” I said.

“Huh? Cas, you can’t—”

I rounded on Dean and snarled, “You got us into this, now go sit down before you fall.” I pushed him in the direction of the booth and he went with it. He was dubious, I could see it in the set of his shoulders, but he was trusting me.

Cliff’s grin hadn’t dimmed; if anything he looked a little more pleased. But for form’s sake he protested, “Hey, I was playing with him.” It didn’t matter; he’d seen my dismal performance earlier. He was going to play me, he just had to pretend.

“He’s drunk off his ass,” I said. “I’ll play.” Cliff flicked his eyes over me contemptuously and shrugged.

“Guess it’s your money.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Let me see yours or this deal is off.” He rolled his eyes but extracted cash and set it on Dean’s.

“Whose break?” I asked.

Cliff laughed, low and snide, and said, “Mine, but what the hell. You can break.”

I nodded at him and racked the balls.

The break is the least predictable part of any pool game. This one was nearly perfect. I surveyed the lie of the balls and smiled, looked up to catch Cliff’s eyes and watched his confident expression waver. “The one,” I said. “In the side.” It was an easy shot, with a good setup for the two.

I ran through the low balls in order, calling each shot. By the time I was up to five, Cliff wasn’t smiling any more. I called the six and sank it. I was lining up for the seven when he said, “You bastards are hustling me.” I made my shot. The ball thunked solidly into the pocket.

“Eight in the far corner,” I said, calmly, grinning at him. He glared. The shot was tricky; the side pocket would have been easier. So I was showing off a little. I bent and drew the cue back, and as I moved to make the shot one of Cliff’s friends clapped his hands sharply, trying to startle me.

I could’ve laughed. If only he knew. I could feel that the shot was good, sweet and perfect, as soon as I hit the ball, and the eight dropped into the pocket neatly. I straightened and turned, just in time to catch Cliff reaching for the pile of cash. I grabbed him by the wrist. “I think that’s mine,” I said, still grinning.

“The hell it is,” Cliff growled. “You hustled me.”

“That’s why you shouldn’t play pool with strangers,” I said sweetly. Cliff was fighting my grip and beginning to be confused about why he couldn’t break it. “You never know who’s going to have hidden talents.” With my free hand I gathered up the money and shoved it into my pocket. Cliff tried to twist away, but he didn't know what he was doing; it was trivial to shift until I could put pressure on a couple of the more delicate joints of his hand. His eyes widened and I smiled at him with more teeth than were strictly necessary. “Let it go,” I said gently.

Cliff's eyes flicked over my shoulder and back to my face. No one spoke for a long, tense second, the noise of the bar irrelevant to our little group. Finally, one of Cliff's friends spoke, sounding wary if not quite nervous. “Come on, man, he's right, you shoulda known better,” he said.

“See? Even your friend agrees with me,” I said. Cliff glanced behind me again, and I saw the fight go out of him.

“You better watch your back,” he said. He was trying for tough but not quite making it.

“Let me buy you a round,” I replied. I let go, careful not to twist his fingers painfully, and he snatched his hand away.

“Whatever,” he muttered with ill grace. I turned towards the bar and nearly ran into Dean, who’d come up behind me while I was dealing with Cliff. “Personal space,” I told him, straight-faced. “Look into it.”

Dean looked very confused. I laughed all the way to the bar, handed the bartender cash, and told him to give Cliff and his friends their drinks and keep the change. Then I got two shots, the best the guy had, and took them back to our table. Dean watched me all the way there, bemused and a little pissed off.

“You could've told me you were gonna play it like that,” he said as I set his drink down.

I shrugged. “Next time you'll know,” I said, and held my glass out in invitation; Dean hesitated for only a second before he picked his up and clinked it on mine. We drank, and this time I turned the shot glass down when it was empty. ( _I think I'm beginning to feel something,_ I said, and Ellen tried to mask her surprise. It would be most of a year later before I _really_ got drunk.)

Dean leaned back and asked, “What was your friend's name?”

“Friend? Oh. Angie,” I said. “She was cute, wasn't she?” She and her friend were gone.

“Thought you, uh.” He clearly had no idea how to finish the sentence—this Dean was less closed-off than mine had been, but no more articulate when it came to anything that didn’t involve killing monsters.

“I like women,” I said, taking pity. “Not men so much. Except you.”

If I hadn't known to look for it, I wouldn't have seen the flash of surprise move over his face. I'd have bet all the money in my pocket that his next thought was, _Me? Why me?_ I’d never once been able to answer that particular question in any way he understood, so I just pulled the cash out and slid it across the table. Dean's eyebrows rose. “Pretty sure I’m OK with you holding on to that till we get back to the room,” he said.

I shook my head and replied, “I'd really rather not.” I’d never gotten into the habit of thinking of money as important, so I tended to lose it. He shrugged and took the cash, stowing it in an interior pocket, and then leaned back in his seat.

“I guess I did teach you to hustle pool,” Dean said.

“Yep. I wasn't any good at it at first. I couldn't make it look natural when I was faking being bad.”

Dean snorted. “You got over that. I thought you really sucked when we were playing.”

I sketched a bow and he laughed. “I can count cards, too,” I said. “We made, oh, six hundred bucks at blackjack once, before the dealer caught on and the place threw us out.”

“You seem to have a lot of stories about us getting thrown out of places.”

“Just the two,” I said.

“OK, tell me one of the other ones.”

I thought about it for a few seconds. “Well, there was this one time when we were in New Mexico, and there were these girls, twins, their names were Rosa and Esmeralda...”

After that things got to be fun. Dean insisted on swapping me story for story, and though I'd heard most of them already it was interesting to get them again with less of a filter; these were the versions of Dean's stories he told when he had not spent forty years in Hell, and when he could mention Sam without bitterness coloring his tone. We ended up not leaving the bar until nearly closing (Cliff and his two buddies having slunk out some hours earlier); neither of us was exactly weaving, but we were also feeling no pain. The walk back to the motel was short enough that we weren’t fazed by the chilly air, cold enough that our breath fogged.

Dean kept his voice down as we entered, mindful of Sam's sleeping form. I sat on Dean's empty bed to take off my boots while he ducked into the bathroom; I had the laces untied and one boot off when I realized there was something wrong.

For a second I couldn't put my finger on it. I stopped moving, listening for whatever it was that had caught my attention, and when Dean shut off the sink and silence fell I got it.

I couldn't hear Sam breathing.

I stood and moved to his bedside, clicking on the lamp on the table. Better light made it immediately clear that the shape on the bed wasn't Sam; it was pillows and blankets and sheets, wadded up to resemble a body.

“Dean,” I said, sharp.

He emerged from the bathroom with gratifying speed, toothbrush in hand. As soon as he saw the bed he snarled, “Son of a _bitch_ ,” and came to stand beside me in a few quick strides. He yanked the top blanket back to reveal a note sitting on the pillow, weighed down by Sam's copy of the room key. Dean snatched the paper up.

_Dean_ , it read. _I’m not in trouble, but I’m going to get to the bottom of this. We can’t just let it go. I’ll call you in a couple days. I took the laptop, but there’s a thumb drive with all the current research in your bag. Take care. Sam_

Dean crumpled the note in his fist and swiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Goddammit,” he said. “I shoulda known he backed down too quick.” He pulled out his cell phone and hit the speed dial. I was close enough that I could hear it when the automated voice answered after half a ring; Sam had turned the phone off, if not removed the battery entirely. “I am gonna kick your ass when I catch up with you,” Dean growled after the beep, and hung up.

“It's possible he is in trouble,” I said. “Someone could've made him write that note.”

Dean shook his head and said, “If he had a gun to his head it would've been a few days, not a couple.” I nodded as he turned his attention back to his phone. He and I had had similar codes, when we'd been hunting together after he and Sam parted, though they had clearly not used the same words. He hesitated with his finger over the call button and then snapped the phone shut.

“Bobby'll be pissed if I call him this late,” Dean said reluctantly. “Sam left on his own. If I don't warn Bobby we're split up maybe Sam'll talk to him, let something slip.” He looked longingly at his duffel bag, but shook his head. “I try to drive like this I really will wrap my baby around a tree,” he said, and I thought he wasn't really talking to me anymore. “Don't know what he's driving or which way he went—hey, wait. Do you know where he went?” His gaze fixed on me with sudden hope, and I hated to crush it.

“This all happened before I met you, the first time,” I said. “You never told me about it.” And that, almost certainly, meant it had something to do with the demon blood. Sam had been talking about trying to contact the other special children.

“Well that’s useful,” Dean said, sounding like he wanted to be vicious but was too tired. “Fine. OK. You might as well take the other bed, get some sleep. We’ll ask around in the morning. Damn it.”

* * *

After that we didn’t say much; Dean threw me his spare sweatpants again without being asked, though he muttered something about getting me my own things. He went into the bathroom to change; I contented myself with rinsing my mouth at the kitchenette sink and swallowing a few mouthfuls of water along with one of my weaker painkillers. By the time Dean came out I was in bed. It was a little better than the couch, though still not as good as my bed had been. But at least I didn't have to worry about rolling off; Dean told me once that I'm an active sleeper. (Actually what he said was that I beat him up in my sleep and would I cut it the hell out. I told him I had no control over what I did while unconscious but we could sleep in separate beds if he preferred. He called me a smartass and let the matter drop.)

I fell asleep to the familiar sound of Dean's breathing. It was strange to be in the same room with him but not the same bed, but he was close enough to be comforting; I didn't expect bad dreams. That's what sucks about being human, I find: you can never be sure of your own mind. Being with Dean—with Dean as he was before Hell tried to destroy him—should have given me good dreams. Instead I fought and fought and couldn't reach him; sometimes my opponents were the hosts of Hell and sometimes they were croats and sometimes they were just monsters, but there were always too many of them and I never got any closer. He screamed for me, but in my dreams I can never save him.

My subconscious is not always subtle.

I pulled myself out of the dreams an hour or so after dawn, feeling physically rested but wrung out. Dean was still asleep, his face mashed into the pillow; it always amazed me he could breathe like that. I got dressed as quietly as I could and pulled some cash from our winnings, wrote a quick note and went in search of coffee.

When I got back, Dean was on his phone. “--me know if you hear from him, that's all,” he was saying as I pushed the door open. “Yeah. Yeah, I know, but he's my little brother.” He eyed me as I set his coffee down within easy reach and went on, “Hey, before we hang up, do you know a hunter named Cas?” He paused. “No, I dunno Cas what. He's an inch or two shorter than me, skinny, pale, dark hair and blue eyes.” Another pause while the person on the other end spoke. “We ran into him the other day. He seems to know his stuff but he's got a pretty wild story going and I just want to know if he's been around. You know more hunters than we do. Yeah. Yeah, sure, just a sec.” He held the phone out to me. “Here, she wants to see if she knows your voice.”

As I brought the phone to my ear, I could hear a woman's voice saying, “--really say all that while he's standing right there? Dean?” The voice was husky, smoky, and familiar. Ellen.

“Of course he did,” I said. “I'm sure you know Dean doesn't do tact.” Dean glared at me, but I ignored him.

There was a brief, awkward pause, and then she said, “Well, OK. I take it you're Cas.”

“Yes.”

“Hi there, Cas, I'm Ellen. Say something else.”

“Like what?”

“I don't know, your life story,” she replied briskly.

“I think that would take longer than we have,” I said. “How about: _Exorcizamus te, omnis immundus spiritus—”_

Ellen chuckled. “All right, I think that'll do it. Give the phone back to Dean, willya?”

I did, and he put it back to his ear. “So? You don't. OK, no, that's good. Look, just...please let me know if you hear from Sammy. OK. Yeah, I'll give you a call. Thanks, Ellen.” He closed the phone. “Ellen doesn't know you, so that's a point in your favor. She knows most of the hunters, 'cept us until we wandered into her place. She owns a bar.”

“Yes, the Roadhouse, I know.” I sat and shoved the bag of doughnuts towards him. “I met Ellen and Joanna a few times. And I think I told Sam that the Roadhouse will come under attack in the next few months—were you here for that?”

“Missed it,” Dean said. “You got details on that? Ellen’s good people, so’s Jo.”

“Sam probably included it on the thumb drive,” I said.

Dean made a sour face at the reminder. “Great. OK. Well, we need to find somewhere to look at it, and you need some clothes, and we shouldn't hang around here anyway in case your pool buddy decides to grow a pair, so let's get packed up.”

It was mostly a matter of him packing, of course, since I could wear everything I owned. Dean had packing out down to a science, one of his father's many legacies; twenty minutes later we were shutting the door behind us, and that was with Dean having to get dressed. When I got back from running the key to the motel office Dean was already behind the wheel. He had his coffee in one hand and the doughnuts resting on the seat. I slid into the passenger seat with a feeling of déjà vu I somehow hadn't expected, though all I had to do was glance at Dean to ground myself. Still, when he told me to pick a tape I had to fight down a shiver.

We drove down out of the mountains and south; Dean was heading for Interstate 5. Since we had no idea which way Sam had gone, Dean intended to make for somewhere roughly central and wait for news. Not long after we crossed the border into California, though, he declared the need for a pit stop and took the next exit. I didn’t catch the name of the town, out of frankly not caring that much, but it was a decent-sized place. Dean put gas in the car, and then we went to lunch.

I didn’t actually need to scan the menu; there’d been a year or so between when I started needing to eat and when we stopped being able to find restaurants, and it wasn’t like there was much variety in what diners offered. But the experience of having choices again delighted me—I could pick something I wanted, rather than whatever had been salvaged on the latest supply run. Without Sam there, it was just like old times, and this time I wasn’t distracted by Dean flirting with the waitress. He didn’t say much at all, in fact, as he hadn’t in the car; I was pretty sure he was too busy worrying about Sam. He unbent enough to ask the waitress if there was a Goodwill in town, though, and when we were done eating we followed her directions rather than getting straight back on the highway.

Dean had taught me to shop for clothes just like he’d taught me to shoot and drive: quickly, efficiently, and with a minimum of fuss. It took less than half an hour to find two pairs of jeans, several acceptable shirts, pajama pants, and a package each of socks and underwear, plus a duffel bag to carry everything in. We browsed through the limited selection of suits but nothing would’ve fit me so I didn’t try any on; apparently the men in this town, at least the ones who donated to Goodwill, ran to shorter than me. There was a blue tie on the rack that I put in my pile, though; it was the same shade as Jimmy’s had been, and it pleased my sense of closure. I was turning for the cash register, having reminded myself we actually needed to pay for things, when Dean said, “You should get a winter coat, too.”

“Oh. Right,” I said. “Maybe a hat.”

Dean shrugged and said, “Sure, if you want. But definitely a coat. You don’t wanna catch something.”

I didn’t mention that I never got sick; I was too busy fighting off the memory of Dean, before we realized that particular quirk of fallen angel physiology, telling me flatly that he wasn't going to deal with me getting pneumonia on top of everything else. And if I didn’t get sick, I _did_ get cold, and disliked it, so a coat was a good idea; my jacket wasn't heavy enough for parts of the country that experienced real winter.

There wasn’t much in the way of men’s coats but I hit the jackpot anyway, a wool topcoat in charcoal grey that fit like it had been tailored to me and fell to my knees. As I settled it on my shoulders the feeling of a long coat, even a heavy one, was so familiar I had to stop and take a deep breath. Dean gave me a quizzical look, but limited his comment to, “Looks good on you. Let’s get out of here.”

We picked up a hat after all, and there was even a pair of leather gloves that fit. Then it was back to the car. I caught myself before offering to drive; Dean seemed to be assimilating the idea that I knew him a lot better than he knew me, but that was a far cry from letting me behind the wheel of his baby. (He'd locked the car up, when we climbed out of it the last time, and I didn't understand why until he tossed his keys from right hand to left to right again before winding up and throwing them out into the bushes. When he decided, later, to scavenge the doors for armor on another vehicle, we had to break a window to get in.) It might be that I'd be able to convince him if his itch to keep moving overpowered fatigue, but I wasn't going to push the point unless we had some pressing need to travel and he was completely out of it.

The second half of the day proceeded much like the first: lots of road, not much talking, and endless rock music from Dean's tapes. I got a few approving glances for knowing the words. Though some of it isn't to my taste, I do actually like most of Dean's music. It's hardly celestial choirs, but it's very human. Me being human myself these days, I can appreciate that.

We spent the night in northern Nevada in a town that nestled up to Route 80. Dean wasn't driving fast, though I had a feeling he might be making for Bobby's place in South Dakota. We didn't go out. I was OK with that. The next day was more driving, still east along 80, still slow but with more talking; Dean did his own version of Sam's interrogation, though he was less methodical about it and we often went off on tangents before winding around again—and I kept having to remind myself where, or when, I was and who I was talking to, which was surprisingly tiring. It was a gray day, and the clouds were low and threatening snow not long after dusk when Dean's phone rang. He broke off in the middle of a disquisition on the best burger he ever had (Delaware, and I’d turned my head so he wouldn’t see my expression at the thought of Zachariah’s green room) to answer it.

“Hello? …Hey, have you heard from Sam?” He paused for the other person to answer and annoyance flitted over his face. “Come on, Ellen, please—something bad could be going on here, and I swore I’d look after the kid.” Ellen spoke for several seconds. Dean broke into a smile, small but sincere. “Thanks. Yeah, I will. And Ellen, I owe you one. OK. Bye.” He closed his phone and said, in tones of deep satisfaction, “Lafayette, Indiana. We can get there by morning.”

“That’s a long drive for you to do by yourself,” I said cautiously.

“I got plenty of sleep last night,” he said. I could see the tension bleeding out of him at the relief of knowing where Sam was.

“You know, I have driven this car before.” I paused and thought about that. “Well, before for me anyway.”

Dean gave me an incredulous look that lasted long enough I would have objected had there been any taillights visible ahead of us. I shrugged at him finally and he turned his eyes back to the road. “Guess you and me were pretty tight,” he muttered.

“We were, for a while.” That was one way to describe the relationship, anyway. _Desperate_ also worked, and only more so after Sam said yes.

“You said your friend lost a lot,” Dean said; he was tensing up again. “And your friend was me. So what happened?”

“Dean,” I said slowly, “I’m not sure you want to know this.”

“Yeah, I don’t think I do, but I think I need to.”

“It doesn't _matter_. We're changing it.”

Dean squeezed the steering wheel and said implacably, “I think it matters. So tell me what happened.” I hesitated long enough that he said, “Cas,” and that was kind of my last hope of avoiding the conversation. Now all I had to do was figure out what to tell him, without mentioning the angels. “In the summer of 2012, Sam went to Detroit on a job,” I said, though I actually didn't know exactly what had caused him to end up in the city; we never got that part of the story. “It turned out to be a trap and Sam...” I couldn't very well say _Sam said yes_ without explaining what saying yes meant, and I didn't want to lie outright, but I didn't need to; Dean filled in the logical conclusion.

“Sam didn't make it,” he said tightly. “Why didn't I go with him?”

“You were hunting apart,” I said. True, if not exactly in the way Dean would take it. “There was an upswing in supernatural activity about that time, and two cars can cover more ground than one. A few months later, the Croatoan outbreaks started. And once that got going, everyone lost something.”

“What'd you lose?” Dean asked. I couldn't tell if it was genuine curiosity or trying to distract himself; either way it took too long to force myself to grin, my widest, least sincere grin.

“Take too long to list it all,” I said. My chest ached and I rubbed it absently. Dean's eyes flicked over to me and away.

* * *

 

Lafayette was not a very prepossessing town, in my opinion, and it had enough motels that I expected a long day. But we got lucky at our third stop; Dean was climbing out of the car to go check at the front office when I turned my head and caught a glimpse of Sam through a half-open curtain. “Dean,” I said, and jerked my head when he turned back to look at me.

“Thank God you’re OK,” Dean muttered. His relief was practically palpable. But after a second I saw Sam move and Dean broke into a grin. “Oh, you’re better than OK. Sam, you sly dog.” Dean had a slightly better angle and I had to lean to see what he was referring to.

Sam wasn’t alone; at first all I saw was a short, dark-haired female form, and for a wild moment I thought it was Ruby—impossible, of course, she hadn’t even escaped Hell for the first time yet. Then the woman turned and I could see her better. All she shared with Ruby’s stolen body was her build and hair color, but I still recognized her.

“That’s Ava Wilson,” I said. I was leaning close enough to Dean that I could feel his surprise. “She’s another of the special children—she's like Sam, Azazel fed her his blood. I didn’t know you met her so soon.” I knew she’d been dangerous, by the time Sam got to Cold Oak, but that was after months of killing to survive. Right now, she was probably a relatively ordinary young woman. She and Sam were leaning over something that sat on a table.

“What, you think Sam came here to meet her? This is about Yellow Eyes?”

I studied Sam, who was glancing at Ava now as she spoke. I couldn't make out what she was saying; I never picked up the trick of reading lips. “I don't know,” I replied. “I'd think so, but like I said, you never told—”

The shooter was close enough that the sound of the glass in Sam's window breaking was drowned under the crack of the shot itself. Dean and I both ducked, an instinct that John had instilled in him and I had learned through painful experience.

After a moment, Dean flung his door open. “Go get Sam out,” he barked over his shoulder at me, most of the way out of the car before I even began to reach for him. I wasted a good two seconds cursing him and then scrambled over the seat and out the driver's door myself; it was on the far side of the car from the direction of the shot. A glance showed me Dean, running for the building across the street that was the best candidate for the sniper’s position. “Goddammit, Dean,” I muttered. Of _course_ he was heading straight for the shooter; this was not my Dean, who'd finally, finally been burned often enough by leaping before he looked that he sometimes took a second to think. And the shot had been meant for Sam.

There weren’t any more shots, which meant the odds were good the sniper was still focused on his scope, studying Sam’s room to see if he’d hit his target or lining up for another; likely he had no idea Dean was coming. In which case it would be perfectly safe for me to walk right up to Sam’s door. But breaking cover would leave me a sitting (walking?) duck if I was wrong. I turned and shuffled to the side so I could peer over the Impala’s trunk at the building.

Dean was out of sight, in search of a way onto the roof. My angle was bad, but the sniper wasn’t quite as good as he no doubt thought he was; I was pretty sure I could see the very end of the barrel of the rifle. He was just a little too close to the edge. I reached into the car and pulled out my hat, and waved it over the hood. The muzzle didn’t twitch. Good sign. I was just about to stand up when there was a surge of movement and the muzzle vanished. “Hah,” I said quietly. The movement had been the right color to be Dean, which meant the shooter was dealt with. I pulled the keys out of the ignition and shut the car door before heading for Sam’s room. Briskly, but not running; we’d done enough to attract attention. All the way there I waited for the skin-crawling feeling of someone drawing a bead on me, but it didn’t come. At the door I knocked and called, “Sam, it’s Cas.” The pause before Sam answered was long enough that I started to worry, but then Sam said, “Where’s Dean?”

“He went after the shooter,” I replied. “We should get out of here.” A moment later Sam opened the door, just far enough to let me get inside. “I have to pack,” he said. “Ava, this is Cas, he’s a friend.” Ava, who was standing carefully out of the line of sight from the window, turned her wide eyes on me. She was impressively calm, all things considered. I offered her a smile and she returned it tentatively.

Sam, meanwhile, was moving even as he spoke, packing his things with the same efficiency Dean used. I noticed that he was keeping an eye on me, and didn’t bother being insulted; from his point of view it was perfectly sensible to suspect me a little.

I went over to the window and edged an eye around the frame until I could see the building across the street. There was no sign of Dean, no movement at all. I must have made some noise because Sam said sharply, “What?”

“I don’t see Dean,” I said.

“OK, whoa, hold on a second,” Ava said. She took a step forward, threw a glance at the window, and retreated again. “Who’s Dean?”

“My brother,” Sam said as he slipped his laptop into its bag.

“And he just went after a guy with a sniper rifle? By himself?”

Sam and I exchanged glances. “Dean…used to be in the Army,” Sam said. “He can take care of himself.”

“I am _so_ calling the cops,” she said.

“No!” Sam and I exclaimed in unison. Ava hesitated, her hand on her phone, and Sam added hastily, “The dreams and stuff? This is a little weird for the police, that’s all.”

“We should at least make sure Dean’s all right first,” I said. There still wasn’t any sign of activity on the roof, and it was beginning to worry me.

Ava sighed and said, “Fine. But don’t blame me if we get shot or something.”

Sam abandoned his packing and the three of us crossed the street. The shooter’s building was only two stories tall; between us it was simple to climb onto the flat roof. But there was no one up there.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t be talking to the cops?” Ava asked as we moved to the edge of the roof. She sounded plaintive and bewildered, and I felt bad for her.

“Trust me, that wouldn’t do much good,” Sam said, kneeling. He picked up something shiny and tossed it to me: a shell casing. I examined it.

“.223,” I said. “Subsonic?”

Sam nodded and replied, “Shooter must’ve put a suppressor on the rifle.”

“Dude. Who are you guys?” Ava asked.

Sam met my eyes for a second and shrugged. “Cas served with Dean, and our dad was in the Marines. You pick things up.” He got to his feet and pulled out his cell phone.

“Who are you calling?”

“Dean. He should be here,” Sam said. He hit the speed dial and waited, long enough that it was clear the call was going to voicemail. “Dean, it’s me—are you OK? Call me when you get this, or I’ll try again in half an hour.” He hung up, a deeply unhappy look on his face. “I should finish packing,” he said.

* * *

 

We were in the motel office returning Sam’s key when his phone rang. He smiled apologetically at the motel clerk and stabbed the answer button. “Dean!”

I could make out Dean’s voice, if not what he was saying, and I felt the least bit of tension go out of my shoulders. At least he was alive and talking.

“Yeah,” Sam said, continuing his transaction in pantomime. “Look, I’m in Indiana. Lafayette.” We’d had a brief discussion and decided it was better for Sam to play dumb in case someone was listening to Dean’s end of the call.

Dean spoke while Sam gave the clerk one last smile and turned away from the desk. He lowered his voice and we pushed out the office door. “Yeah, I’m sorry. But man, there’s someone after me.” He paused. “I don’t know, but we need to find out. Where are you?” He nodded, patting his pockets for a pen and a pad of the motel’s notepaper. “Sure, be there soon,” he said, and hung up.

Sam jotted something on the paper before he looked at me, his expression grim. “Someone’s got a gun on him,” he said. “He gave me a code word.”

“What?” Ava said. We crossed the parking lot, headed for the Impala. “You have code words for being kidnapped?” She shook her head. “I repeat: who _are_ you guys?”

“It’s…hard to explain,” Sam said. We reached the car; I pulled the keys from my pocket and offered them to Sam.

“You’re some kind of, of secret agents or something, is that it?”

“Kind of?” Sam said. He unlocked the trunk and slung his duffel bag into it, and then turned to lean against the car. “Ava, look. You had your dreams, and you believed in them enough to come here. You have to have realized that's not all there is to it. There are a lot of things out there that most people don't believe in. We...deal with them.”

Ava shook her head sharply. “This is insane,” she said. Her tone suggested she’d said it before. Sam regarded her with some sympathy, but all he said was, “I think you need to go home.” She opened her mouth to protest, but Sam kept talking. “You need to get out of the line of fire, Ava—no one ever trained you for this kind of thing.”

And now I had a problem.

I had no solid idea of when Ava had disappeared, but it couldn’t be very long from now. Aside from wanting to save her, it could only be a good thing if she didn’t spend the next several months in Cold Oak, learning to control minor demons and developing a willingness to kill. I was very carefully believing that any changes I made would stick, because the other option was to eat a bullet.

But I didn’t know how to save her, not with any certainty, and it was possible that I could learn something about how Sam would be taken if I let Azazel have Ava. The Castiel Dean had first met would have done it, too. _I_ would have done it. What really worried me was that I had no idea at all of how much I could change without drawing Heaven’s attention, though at least they weren’t monitoring constantly or someone would’ve noticed me by now; I was, after all, hanging out with the True Vessels.

“Leaving won't help, Sam,” I said reluctantly. They both turned to look at me. I returned Ava’s stare. “Things are coming to a head,” I told her. “You’re special, like Sam is special.” I flicked a glance at him to see if he’d picked up the implication; he looked grim. “The safest thing to do would be to run—preferably from here, without going home first. But if you can’t do that, there are some precautions you should take. Sam, give me a piece of that paper.” He did, without a word, and I fished out my Sharpie from the doctor’s office to draw the simple devil’s trap. As I sketched I kept talking; Ava was watching me with her eyes huge and round. “Draw this near the doors; on the bottom of a rug will do, or on the ceiling. If anyone comes to your house who can’t step out of the circle, call Sam. Line the windowsills with salt, any salt, even table salt will work. That way at least your home will be safe.”

“Safe from _what_?” Ava demanded. Sam and I shared a look. I finished the drawing and held the paper out to her, but she didn’t take it. “Look, you’re walking into my vision here! This is how you _die_.” And that, at least, explained how she’d run into Sam; she’d had one of the prophetic dreams and believed it enough to follow up.

Sam grimaced as he shut the trunk, but by the time he turned to Ava he’d conjured a smile. “Was Cas in your dream?” he asked. Ava shook her head. “Then things are different already. Ava, it’ll be fine. These visions can be changed, OK? They aren’t set in stone.” I was pretty sure the expression on his face was the one Dean referred to as _Sam’s goddamn puppy dog eyes_ when he continued, “I have to do this—it’s my brother. I’ll have Cas to watch my back. But you shouldn’t get any closer to the guy with the gun than you already have.” Ava bit her lip.

“Please,” Sam said. She sighed.

“OK, but you have to be careful. I’m not kidding around here, Sam. I think there’s more than one wire, so _look_.”

Sam nodded. “I will. You too, OK? Draw this, for real.” He took the paper from me and presented it to her, and this time she took it. She looked down at the paper, then back up at Sam, and shook her head. “This really is insane,” she said. “I'm not special. I just had some weird dreams.”

Sam's smile twisted and he shrugged. “Just watch yourself,” he said. Ava nodded.

“You too. I...guess it was nice to meet you?”

Sam escorted Ava to her car, coaxed her into it, and sent her off; I leaned on the car and took a pill while I waited. When he got back I tilted my head at him and said, “Another wire?”

“Yeah,” Sam said, and sighed. “Apparently whoever’s got Dean has a grenade rigged up to a tripwire. Gotta give it points for originality, I guess.”

“Oh, that’s clever. You spot the first wire and feel smug about it, then the second one gets you.” It was the kind of gotcha we’d gotten good at in camp; croats weren’t smart enough to need that kind of measure, but fellow survivors were a different proposition altogether. Sam tossed me the keys so I could unlock my door.

“Yeah, I kind of hate it when the bad guys are clever,” Sam said sourly. I nodded.

Once we were both in the car I said, “We have to assume the kidnapper knows you’re coming in hot, but odds are he doesn’t even realize I exist. Or they, we should plan for they.”

“So first thing we do is a little recon,” Sam agreed. “You should probably do that. If you get spotted they’re less likely to recognize you.” For the rest of the short drive we tossed ideas back and forth. It wasn’t as smooth as planning with Dean, but Sam had a way of coming at things sideways that was enlightening.

We passed the address Dean had given Sam without slowing. The neighborhood was bad, most of the houses dilapidated and the yards unkempt—a lot more familiar than the well-maintained suburbia of River Grove. A hundred yards down, Sam pulled over and we got out. Sam opened the trunk and dug through the gun bag, pulling out his Taurus and loading it. He eyed me for a moment as he went through the motions and said, “You know guns?”

“Yeah,” I said. He jerked his chin at the bag and said, “Help yourself.”

I raised my eyebrows at him. “You’ve had plenty of chance to kill me,” he said frankly, looking at me over his gun. I acknowledged the point and pulled the mouth of the bag open.

It seemed politic to pass over Dean’s favorite Colt 1911, but the gun next to it made me smirk—it was a Beretta, and I’d last seen it four days ago, falling from my hand as I passed out in the conviction I’d never wake up. (Four days ago on my timeline, anyway; to the rest of the world none of that had happened yet.) There were even two full clips for it. I shoved one into my jacket pocket and slid the other into place. It made a satisfying click. “Let me get my bag, too,” I said as I tucked the gun into my waistband. “If I have stuff I can claim I was checking the place out to crash there.”

“Good idea,” Sam said. “You want a sleeping bag?”

“Nah. It got ruined last time I had to sleep outside,” I said, and Sam smirked.

My duffel bag could be rigged as a backpack, so I did, and slung my overcoat over my arm for good measure. Thus prepared, Sam and I walked back towards the house. There was no sign of any guards, and only one car parked near the porch.

The house was in bad shape. It was probably still sound enough, but it was clear there’d been no maintenance in years. The windows were boarded over and the front door wasn’t square in its frame; the white paint on the wooden siding was peeling and filthy. Trash littered the lot.

“Gonna see if I can get a look inside,” I said. Sam nodded, and I moved away from him as quietly as I could. The dead grass of the lawn was too damp to rustle, but I placed my feet carefully to avoid tripping over any of the flotsam.

As I approached the house I caught a voice. It was muffled by the wall and I didn't recognize it. “...what he was going to turn into someday. You'd take him out, no questions, am I right?” it said. A man.

“That's not Sam,” Dean said. His voice was almost too low to make out and I could hear the strain lacing it, but I felt myself relaxing a little nonetheless at the confirmation that he was alive.

“Yes it is. You just can't see it yet. Dean, it's his destiny. Look, I'm sympathetic.” He actually sounded it, too. “He's your brother, you love the guy. This has got to hurt like hell for you. But here's the thing.” Dean grunted, but said nothing. I slid one eye around the edge of the window, slowly so as not to catch attention with sudden motion. The interior of the house was just as cluttered and dirty as the outside. I was looking into the large front room; in the middle of it, near the front door, Dean sat in a chair. His wrists were tied to the arms and his ankles to the chair's legs. A man stood behind him, in the process of tying a bandana into a gag, talking as he did. “It woulda wrecked him. But your dad? If it really came right down to it, he would have had the stones to do the right thing here. But you're telling me you're not the man he is?” He finished his knot and stood back. Dean shook his head furiously.

The other man went over to the only other useable chair and sat in it. “Won't be long now,” he said. “At least then it'll be over.” Dean glared at him. I edged back from the window to circle the house. There was a back door—probably where Dean's captor had his grenade rigged, since he and Dean were so close to the front entrance. There were no other doors and it didn't seem likely I'd be picking up much more conversation, so I made my way back to Sam. He was waiting impatiently just out of sight of the house, leaning on the far side of a garage that looked like it hadn't been opened in years.

“OK, as far as I can tell there's only one guy,” I said, settling against the wall next to him. “It sounded to me like he knew you two, or at least Dean.”

“What's he look like?”

“He's black, very short hair, a mustache and goatee. About Dean's height, athletic build, moved like he could handle himself; if I had to guess I'd say he's a hunter.”

Sam's eyes narrowed in thought for a moment. “And he knew us—Gordon. Damn, that's Gordon Walker.” He sighed while I considered the name, which was faintly familiar.

“He…had a sister who was turned into a vampire?” I said after a second. Sam shot me a startled look. “Dean told me a lot of stories when we were hunting together,” I reminded him.

“Right,” he said. “Right, yeah. We ran into him because there was a nest of vamps who were eating cattle instead of people, and Gordon still wanted them all dead. They were monsters, so they had to die.” Sam was trying to be matter-of-fact, but there was a tinge of frustration in his tone that puzzled me until I considered Dean’s very similar stance.

“Yeah,” I said slowly. “Sam…from what I heard, Gordon knows something about the demon blood.”

Sam froze for a long moment. “Crap,” he said. “That’s going to make this tough. He’s not gonna want to get talked down.”

“I think we just go in and get Dean out. Gordon’s not important.”

“Maybe not, but he’s pretty determined,” Sam said. “We have to do something to keep him off our backs or he’ll keep coming after us. Or _me_.”

“I don’t think we should kill him,” I said. From what I could remember, Gordon had been a vampire himself when he died, and I was wary of changing anything I didn’t have to.

“What? No, of course not,” Sam said, sounding startled. “But that doesn’t mean we have to let him come after us…oh, I know.” A smile spread over his face, full of the simple joy of having out-thought someone. “OK, here’s the plan.”

A few minutes later, I waited while Sam picked the lock on the back door; I could have done it, but it would have taken me several times as long. Once that was done he pocketed his tools and hurried around to the front of the house. I eased the door open.

The first tripwire was right inside the door, where you’d be hard pressed to miss stepping on it if you just walked in. I reached out and yanked it; the pin from a grenade flew towards me. I stepped back fast and swung the door almost shut, counting down in my head. I even remembered to cover my ears; the explosion was loud but not painfully so.

After a second I peered in. Nothing moved. I drew my gun, just in case, and moved in just far enough to be standing on the limp tripwire. The second one was easy enough to spot since I was looking for it, though it might have caught me if I’d been congratulating myself on my cleverness. I picked up a chunk of two-by-four and used it to repeat the yanking-and-backing-off procedure, but this time I didn’t wait; as soon as the debris from the explosion hit the floor I hurried back inside to lurk against the wall that separated my room from the one where Gordon was keeping Dean.

He came through the arch cautiously with his rifle ready, but he didn’t actually expect me—or Sam—to still be standing. I waited until he passed me and paused, looking for the body that should have been on the floor.

The 92FS is a semi-automatic so, sadly, I couldn't dramatically thumb the hammer back. Instead I settled for touching the end of the barrel to the base of his skull and then pulling it away—no sense in giving him a clue as to exactly where the weapon was—before I said conversationally, “Put the gun down.”

Gordon went still with the waiting tension of a man looking for an opening and said, “Wish I could say it was nice to see you, Sammy.”

“Put. It. Down,” I said.

Moving slowly, Gordon bent to do as I said, speaking as he went. “You wouldn’t shoot me, would you? Because your brother, he thinks you’re some kind of saint.”

I laughed—between his blatant manipulation and the way I could see him tensing to swing around and hit me, Gordon was making it a little too easy to not take him seriously. There was an edge to his voice when he asked, “What’s funny, Sammy?” as he straightened and turned—and stopped dead at the sight of me. “Who the hell are you?” I grinned at him.

“Someone who wants to know why you’ve got a guy tied up in the front room,” I said, and swung my improvised club. Gordon ducked enough that he wasn’t knocked unconscious outright, but he went down and seemed likely to stay that way for a little while, so I backed away until I could get a look at Dean. Sam was working on untying Dean’s feet; as I watched Dean reached for the gag and pulled it out of his mouth. The last rope fell away and Dean gave his brother a hand up. I glanced back at Gordon, who wasn’t stirring.

“That son of a—” Dean began, turning towards me and the back room, but Sam said, “Dean, no.”

Dean stopped to give Sam an incredulous, furious look. “I let him live once,” he said. “I’m not making the same mistake twice.”

“Trust me,” Sam said, smiling a little. “Gordon is taken care of. Let’s get out of here.”

Dean wavered and looked at me. I shrugged. “He’s down for now,” I said. “We might want to hurry, though.”

“Fine,” Dean said after a moment’s pause, and followed Sam’s tug on his arm. I went after them, tucking my gun away as I did.

We were about halfway across the lawn when I heard the door swing open behind us and looked back to see Gordon, a gun in each hand, striding across the porch. “Run,” I said. The brothers turned to look and Dean said, “Crap,” in a casual way I would have found hilarious under other circumstances. We ran as Gordon started shooting after us.

No matter what anyone tells you, it’s actually pretty hard to hit something the size of a person with a handgun at any significant distance. I mean, I can do it, but I’m special; Dean and Sam can because they practice a lot. Gordon probably practiced too, but he’d been hit in the head recently. Most of the shots went wide, though a few were worryingly close through luck or pure stubbornness.

“Oh, come _on_ ,” Dean said. “You two morons call this taken care of?” There was a drainage ditch on the far side of the road; Sam tumbled into it first, with Dean and me after him neck-and-neck. Dean gathered himself to jump up and keep running, but Sam grabbed him by the jacket and hauled him back down under cover as Gordon shot into the dirt near us. “Sam, what the hell?” Dean demanded.

Out of the corner of my eye I caught movement that wasn’t Gordon and turned my head to watch as Sam said, “Just trust me on this one, OK?” Dean was opening his mouth to object when suddenly sirens blared and the night filled with flashing lights. We were nicely concealed, but Gordon was in full view of anyone with eyes when the three police cars pulled up and cops started piling out.

“Drop your weapons, down on your knees!” one of them yelled, followed by another. Dean grinned at Sam as Gordon, his face blank, dropped his guns and went to his knees. Sam smiled back. “Anonymous tip,” he said, and ducked his head to hide the laughter.

“You’re a fine upstanding citizen, Sam,” Dean said, and glanced at me. “You too, Cas. I heard what you said to him. You were just passing by, happened to notice the kidnapped guy?” I smirked and shrugged, and Dean’s smile got wider.

It wasn’t difficult to get away without the police seeing us; they were far more interested in the guy they’d caught walking across a residential street firing a pair of handguns than in looking around for us. Plus they found the weapons cache in his car. Dean chuckled most of the way back to the Impala, but by the time we got there he'd sobered. We climbed in and Dean started driving.

He didn't go far, though. Maybe ten minutes down the road, he pulled over. Sam and I both stared as he put the car in park and opened the door. “Gotta make a call,” he said, trying to sound nonchalant.

“Dean,” Sam began, but Dean was most of the way out of the car and said, “Back in a second, Sam, OK?” And then he was out, and swinging the door closed behind him. Sam turned enough that he could look at me, and we exchanged shrugs.

After a second Sam said, “OK.” He pulled out his own phone as Dean walked up to the front of the Impala, which rocked a little as he leaned against it. Sam eyed his brother for a moment longer before he turned his attention back to his phone. He waited as it rang, and then through whatever message was on the voicemail. “Ava, it's Sam. I just wanted to let you know Dean and I are both OK, Cas too. Guess you don't want to pick up while you're driving, so give me a call to let me know you made it home. Thanks, later.”

We settled into silence after that, waiting while Dean finished his conversation. It was short, but when he got back into the car he didn't look happy. “Bad news?” Sam asked mildly. Dean shot him an annoyed glance as he started the engine again.

“Gordon got some of his intel at the Roadhouse,” he said. “I just wanted to ask Ellen if she knew anything about that.”

Sam sat back in his seat, looking worried and thoughtful. “Ellen wouldn't do that, Jo either. Not even Ash.”

Dean's hands twisted restlessly on the steering wheel. “Yeah,” he said. “That's what she said too. But someone's been talking, and I think we should find out who.”

“What are you going to do, Dean, walk in and start beating people up?”

“If I have to,” Dean said. I had a flash of what my Dean would have done, given a target pool and something he thought he needed to know, and cold fingers crept up my spine. ( _Goddammit, Cas, you weren't so picky about it when you had Alastair! We need the intel. Now are you gonna help me set up or not?_ )

“Yeah, right,” Sam said, a laugh in his voice.

“I'm not screwing around,” Dean said tightly. “We need to know who's talking and what they're saying.”

“OK,” Sam said. “Not tonight, though. I’m about to fall over and I bet you guys aren’t much better.” I agreed with him; coming off a high is never fun, and adrenaline highs are no exception. It tended to make me shaky, though at least I didn’t get actively sick any more.

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean said. His jaw was set. I was wondering idly how much effort it was going to take to get him alone so I could goad him into shouting to let off some steam when Sam said, “Well at least we don’t have to worry about Gordon for a while. Man, did you see the look on his face?”

There was half a second when I thought it wasn’t going to work, but then one corner of Dean’s mouth quirked up. “He didn’t know what hit him, that’s for sure,” he said. “Calling the cops, kinda the nuclear option there, Sammy.”

“You use the tools you have,” Sam said easily. “How else was I supposed to keep him off our backs?”

“Bullets work,” Dean grumbled, but his heart wasn’t really in it. I studied Sam’s profile from my place in the back seat, considering how nice it was to have an ally.

* * *

Dean seemed intent on putting some distance between us and Lafayette, which neither Sam nor I felt like objecting to. We spent the time catching everyone up on exactly what had happened; an hour in, Sam tried Ava again, and still got no reply. He left another message and ended the call with a disturbed expression.

“Everything all right?” Dean asked, glancing at him.

“Yeah,” Sam said. “I hope so.”

“Well, Gordon’s gonna have to be careful reaching for the soap for the next few years at least,” Dean said.

“Yeah. If they pin Scott Carey’s murder on him. And if he doesn’t bust out.”

Dean thought that over for a second. “Dude, you ever take off like that again…” he said.

Sam rolled his eyes and said, “What? You’ll kill me?”

I shifted in my seat, half trying to get more comfortable and half attempting to remind them that I was there; I wasn’t in the mood for listening to brotherly bickering. For one thing, most of my pills were in my bag, in the trunk, and my chest was starting up again.

“That is so not funny,” Dean said.

Sam laughed. “All right, all right. So where to next, then?”

“How’s Amsterdam sound?” Dean asked, in the kind of joking tone that wasn’t really.

“Dean,” Sam said.

“Come on, man, I hear the coffeeshops don’t even serve coffee.”

I puzzled over that one for a second before interjecting, “Then what do they serve?”

Sam, who had opened his mouth to reply, stopped in the middle of whatever he was going to say and turned to look at me as if he’d forgotten I was in the car. After a second he said, “Dean means Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Cas.”

“That doesn’t actually answer my question,” I pointed out. Sam blinked at me, then turned to his brother. Dean was staring at me in the rear view mirror, his eyebrows high.

“Dude, seriously, you don’t know this?”

“If I knew I wouldn’t have asked,” I said, a little annoyed.

“Pot,” Dean said, with the air of explaining something to a small child. “It’s legal there. They sell it in coffeeshops.” He paused. “ _How_ do you not know this?”

“I’ve never had occasion to find out,” I said, cursing mentally. It was always things like this that caught me out, movies and music and cultural references, experiences that any adult would have had. Jimmy would have known. “I…had a very sheltered upbringing.”

“No kidding,” Dean said. “Anyway, it sounds great to me. Lots of tall blondes in Holland, right?”

“Yeah, like you’d give up on the job,” Sam said.

“Screw the job,” Dean said with surprising vehemence. “Seriously, screw it, I’m sick of the job anyway. We don’t get paid, we don’t get thanked, the only thing we get is bad luck.”

I tried not to visibly gape at him. Fortunately, Sam wasn’t paying attention to me anymore. “Come on, dude, you’re a hunter. I mean, it’s what you were meant to do.”

“I wasn’t meant to do anything,” Dean said, still intent. “I don’t believe in that destiny crap.” That, at least, I’d heard before, if phrased rather more profanely and usually including a reference to what a dick Zachariah was.

“You mean you don’t believe in my destiny,” Sam said bluntly.

Dean hunched a little and muttered, “Yeah, whatever.”

Sam sighed and said, “Look, Dean—I’ve tried running. I ran all the way to Stanford and look how that turned out. We can’t run from this, and you can’t protect me from the whole world.”

“I can try,” Dean said, like he was swearing an oath.

Quietly, Sam said, “Thanks for that.” Dean nodded. “Dean…I’m gonna keep hunting. Whatever’s coming, I’m taking it head-on, so if you really wanna watch my back, then I guess you’re gonna have to stick around.”

“Bitch,” Dean said, and Sam grinned and responded, “Jerk.” After a second Sam went on, “Anyway, we’ve got a jump on the opposition, right? We’ve got Cas to tell us what not to do.”

“Right. Ace in the hole,” Dean said. He grinned at me in the mirror; I tried to return it.

“Yeah,” Sam said, running his thumb over the keys of his phone.

“You calling that Ava girl again? You sweet on her or something?”

“She’s engaged, Dean,” Sam said.

“So? What’s the point of saving the world if you can’t get a little nookie once in a while?” Sam shook his head, distracted, and Dean said, “What?”

“Just a feeling.” Sam stared out the window for a few seconds. “How far is it to Peoria?”

Dean didn’t answer for a second. “I thought you said you were beat.”

“I am, I just…I don’t know, I have a bad feeling about this.” Sam made a helpless gesture.

Dean huffed and said, “OK, fine. Peoria it is. Find her address for me and then take a nap.”

* * *

It took nearly three hours to get to Ava's house. Sam made Dean sleep for the second half of the trip; I lay in the back seat with my eyes closed, but couldn't drop off. I ached, despite the ibuprofen I swallowed, and I couldn't stop replaying Dean's outburst. I'd never heard him express a dislike for hunting in quite that way. He'd complain about it being difficult or dangerous or even unremunerative, certainly, but he'd always talked as if those were quirks to be tolerated rather than serious problems.

Of course, Dean had recently learned that his chosen career would kill Sam if things didn't change, so perhaps he was still in shock.

Ava's house was small and neatly kept. There were no lights on, unsurprisingly, but her car sat in the driveway. “So how we doing this?” Dean asked, as we sat in the car by the curb. “You gonna knock at this hour?”

Sam grimaced, but said, “Yeah. Her fiancé can punch me or something if I'm wrong.”

Dean and I leaned on the car while Sam went up to the door. He knocked and rang the doorbell, and waited. No one answered. He repeated the process, with similar results. Dean sighed and went to the trunk as Sam started his third round of knocking. By the time Sam turned away from the door Dean had pulled out an assortment of flashlights and shotguns, and handed me one of each.

“Better hope they don't have an alarm,” Dean said, giving Sam his own flashlight as he got back to the car. Sam nodded, his mouth in a grim line. The lock wasn't any more sophisticated than the last one he'd picked, and he popped it in less than a minute.

Once we were through the door we swept the ground floor. There was no one there, and no answer when Sam called out. The house made me uneasy, and only more so as we mounted the stairs.

Only a few steps up, I smelled it, heavy and metallic; a moment later, Dean and Sam did too. Blood, and to be smelling it this far away there had to be a lot of it—more than anyone could lose and live.

We found the body in the bedroom, lying on the bed with its eyes wide and fixed. It was a man, I assumed Ava's fiancé. “Oh my God,” Sam said, sounding angry and more than a little sick. To be honest I was a trifle sickened myself; croats killed people, and it was usually messy, but this was a step beyond anything I usually encountered. He'd essentially been gutted, his chest torn open. Dean had no expression at all as he stepped over to the window and ran a finger along the sill. “Sulfur,” he said. “Demon's been here.” Sam knelt and picked something from the floor, holding it up into the beam from his flashlight: a diamond ring.

“Ava,” he said.

A patch of white caught my eye and I bent in my turn to pick it up. It was the paper I'd drawn the devil's trap on. Sam looked at it and his lips thinned.

“She never got a chance to use it,” I said.

* * *

I called the police, setting the phone down when the operator started asking for my name. Sam wiped Ava's ring and left it on the bedside table; I put the paper in my little interior pocket along with Dean’s amulet. We got away clean; didn't even hear the sirens.

Dean attempted to start conversation a few times as he searched for a motel, but Sam answered in monosyllables or not at all, and eventually Dean gave up. Sam maintained his silence until we’d found a motel, gotten a room (specifically with a couch in it, Dean assured me), and taken our bags inside. Then, with Dean digging through his bag in search of his toiletries, Sam turned to me and demanded, “Where is she?”

I gritted my teeth. “Where is she?” Sam repeated, more forcefully this time. Dean slowly straightened, watching his brother with wary eyes.

“I can’t tell you,” I said finally, reluctantly. Sam’s eyes went wide and furious, and he took a step in my direction that I didn’t like the look of.

“Ava was taken by a demon,” he said, impressively calm but with anger roiling under the surface. “You know where she is. I think you _can_ tell me.”

“I can’t risk it, Sam,” I said, trying to sound reasonable. “I’m changing things enough already, just by being here. Hell, I shouldn’t have given her the devil’s trap. _Anything_ could be the thing that gets noticed, and if that happens—”

“I get stabbed?” Sam asked sharply. “I’ll watch my back! I run risks all the time. Ava doesn’t.” He was still moving towards me, trying to intimidate with his height and bulk. He was even standing up straight, something he rarely did.

“It’s not that simple,” I protested, hoping desperately that Sam wasn’t angry enough to actually take a swing. I could handle him—he wouldn’t be expecting my strength, for one thing—but there was only so much I could do without risking hurting him, and he’d have fewer inhibitions about hurting _me_.

“You practically told me our life stories for the next few months already! Why is this any different?”

“Because Ava’s one of the special children,” I said, willing him to understand. “No one cares about the girl in San Francisco who gets turned into a werewolf, or the shapeshifter in Milwaukee, but if we get anywhere _near_ the place where Ava is, it will be noticed. At that it would have been better for me to tell you as little as I could get away with, but I think that ship has sailed.” I took a deliberate step back from Sam, forcing my body language to be calm. “Regardless, we can’t touch _anything_ Azazel does. We can’t risk catching his attention. If he changes what he’s doing, that’s the end of our advantage.”

Dean stepped to Sam’s side and put a hand on his shoulder. Sam stared at me for another second. “Sam,” Dean said, and Sam let out a breath.

“Damn it,” he said quietly.

“I’m sorry,” I said. Sam nodded, his eyes on the floor, and turned to his bag. Neither Dean nor I spoke until Sam had shut the bathroom door behind himself.

After a second, Dean said, “Sam gets attached.” He kept his voice low enough not to be heard through the door.

“I know. But I can't let him...”

I trailed off as Dean held up his hands, shaking his head. “No, dude, I'm right with you. Anything that keeps Sam from gettin' stabbed, I'm on board.” He considered for a second. “Guess this means we should just...do our thing, right? Look for cases like you aren't even here.”

“Yeah,” I said. I sat down on the closest bed. It was well after midnight and I just wanted to rest. “Before that, though, I have a request.”

Dean made a questioning face, and I took a deep breath. This wasn't, perhaps, the best of ideas, but on the other hand...no one would be watching him, not even my present-day, angelic self. I'd had no need to; I could have found Jimmy Novak, or Claire, anywhere.

“I need to go to Pontiac,” I said.

* * *

Dean drummed his fingers on the wheel. “You sure he’s gonna be alone?” he asked.

“Positive,” I said. “He has the house to himself.” Amelia and Claire went for ‘girls day out’ on Saturdays. We turned the corner and Dean drew up to the curb. “Get some coffee or something,” I said, waving at the café. “I’ll call when I’m on my way back.”

He turned the car off and stared out the windshield. I had my hand on the door when he said abruptly, “Why don’t you want backup on this, Cas?”

I turned back to him. His jaw was set. I said, “I don’t need backup. This is just a guy. Completely vanilla. The closest he gets to the supernatural is going to church on Sundays. I owe him, that’s all.” In the end I’d killed Jimmy Novak. Raphael had done the smiting, but it was my choices that had gotten us smitten.

“You’re not letting me drop you at his house,” Dean protested. “You won’t even tell us his _name_.”

Because with a name they could find a face, and that was not a can of worms I wanted to deal with. “Dean,” I sighed. “It’s private, all right? Nothing to do with you or Sam.”

For a second he didn’t reply, and when he did his voice was tight. “Fine,” he said. “Go do your thing.”

“Dean—”

“Go do your thing, Cas.”

“It’ll only be an hour, maybe less.”

Dean nodded. I hesitated, but I could tell that was the best I was going to get so I pulled myself out of the car.

I was most of the way to Jimmy’s house when my phone rang. I fumbled it out of my pocket, clumsy in my gloves, and managed to hit the talk button before it dropped to voicemail. (Though I'd been tempted I had not, in the end, set up my voicemail with _Why do you want me to say my name?_ ; I wore out my appetite for jokes no one but me would ever get a long time ago.) “Dean,” I said in greeting.

“Weirdest thing just happened, Cas,” Dean said, in a tone that pretended to be casual but wasn’t. “There I am with my overpriced coffee, and who should walk into the place but _you_.”

I stopped cold.

Dean continued, “I noticed in time you were wearing different clothes. You looked straight at me a couple times, too. Bought coffee to go, left again.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say. I was _not ready_ to explain to Dean about the angels, about vessels, about how casually (and unknowingly, though that didn't excuse me) I had ruined a man's life.

“Cas,” Dean said.

“I’m here,” I said through numb lips, and when he spoke again he sounded a little gentler. “You should’ve just told me you wanted to talk to…I guess your past self. Right? That’s got to be what he is.”

“I thought you’d try to stop me,” I said carefully, around a rush of relief so strong it left me lightheaded. The conclusion was perfectly sensible from Dean’s point of view—and only half-wrong.

“Pretty sure if you were gonna screw up the space-time whatever, you'd have done it already,” Dean said. “Besides, no DeLorean.”

“I don't under—never mind. I need to hang up if I'm going to meet him.”

“Yeah, fine. Look, Cas. You have a wedding ring on.”

“I'll explain later,” I said, and snapped my phone shut. In a show of uncharacteristic tact, Dean did not call me back.

So I was waiting when Jimmy turned onto his block. I sat on the edge of the porch, on the theory that I’d look less threatening that way. I kept my head down. Jimmy sounded firm but sympathetic when he spoke.

“Hey, buddy, the bus stop’s down at the corner,” he said. “You shouldn’t wait here.”

I looked up and he froze in the middle of a step, his mouth still open to speak. He was wearing the coat, _my coat_. His breath steamed in the air. I ignored the first twinges in my chest.

“My name is Cas,” I said. “We need to talk.”

I chivvied him into the house by speaking firmly whenever he stopped to stare at me. Once we were inside he dropped his net bag of groceries on the floor as if he had forgotten why he was holding it. He set his mug of coffee on the hall table, at least.

“It's probably simplest if you think of me as a future version of yourself,” I said, and Jimmy gaped at me.

“How...how did you...” he managed.

I started to pull my gloves off. “It's the obvious question,” I said. “No special powers required. Look, you might feel better if you have something to drink.” He stared at me for long enough that I thought I might have to repeat the suggestion, but before I could Jimmy literally shook himself.

“Prove it,” he said, in a voice that was impressively level.

“James Edward Novak,” I said, tucking the gloves into a pocket. “Your wife, Amelia Pearl Emerson, but she hates her middle name; she goes by Amelia E. Novak these days. Claire Elizabeth—Amelia's grandmother and your mother.” I removed my hat and stuffed it after the gloves.

“You could get that off the Internet,” Jimmy said. He was pulling my coat from his shoulders, which I took as a good sign; he'd gotten past enough of the shock for routine to kick in, at least.

I shrugged to acknowledge the point. “You met Amelia at a costume party; you were dressed as Rick and she was Ilsa. You knew what she sounded like having an orgasm before she told you her real name. It's why you always make sure to have a trenchcoat. You told your friends and parents about the costumes, but not about the orgasm.” He stared at me. I sighed. “The first time you prayed you were six years old. You wanted to know why your dog died.”

“Jesus,” Jimmy said, invoking rather than just exclaiming. “How is this even possible?”

That was a damn good question. I still had no idea how any of this had happened. “To be perfectly honest, I don't know,” I replied.

“You traveled in time accidentally?”

“It's more like something carried me than that I traveled,” I said. “I didn't mean to do it and I don't know how it happened, but I'm here—now. Whatever. You're taking this surprisingly well.”

Jimmy snorted and turned to open the hall closet. “I can't imagine this situation would be _improved_ if I freaked out. So I'll freak out later.” He watched his own hands intently as he pulled out a hanger and slid the coat onto it. “Coffee. Do you want coffee? I'll make some coffee.”

“You already have coffee,” I said, waving at it. Jimmy looked at the mug like he'd never seen it before.

“Fine,” he said. “I can still make some for you.”

“I don't think I should stay that long.”

“Just let me make you some damn coffee,” Jimmy said sharply. He pushed a hand back through his hair, closed his eyes, and sighed. “Sorry. Just…this is a little much, OK?”

“Coffee it is,” I said. He opened his eyes and gave me a wan smile.

“Science fiction has never been my thing,” he said as we walked to the kitchen. “But I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to ask what year you’re from.”

“Not that it’s terribly relevant, but 2014,” I said. Jimmy threw a glance over his shoulder and asked, “How is it not relevant?”

“Because it’s not gonna happen,” I said. “It’s. Let’s go with ‘It’s not good’. So I’m going to change it.”

Jimmy stopped, one hand on a cabinet door, and glanced at me skeptically. “How does that work? Exactly.”

“I’m here. I know the things that have to happen. I’m going to make sure they don’t.”

“And that’s why you’re talking to me? I’ve got some big role in whatever’s supposed to happen?” He pulled the door open and got out a tin of coffee. “I mean, I’m just a guy. I sell advertising. I’m no one important—you should know.” He sounded bitter about it.

I leaned on the center island. “That’s the problem,” I said. “You think you’re just a guy, and you want some higher purpose. But James—Amelia and Claire, they are your higher purpose. If you let me take you, you’ll lose them, and you’ll regret it the rest of your life.”

Jimmy’s hands stilled in the middle of scooping coffee grounds and he turned to look at me. “Wait, what? _Take_ me? What are you talking about?”

“I said you should think of me as a future version of yourself, but that’s not strictly accurate,” I said, trying not to sound grim. “I’m not _you_ , James. I’m the thing that’s possessing you.”

“Possessing,” he repeated. Then the implication hit and his eyes widened. “You’re telling me you’re a _demon_?”

“Exactly the opposite. I’m an angel of the Lord.” I smiled, though I was sure it didn't look sincere. “Or to be precise I _used_ to be.”

Jimmy dropped the plastic scoop back into the tin and abandoned the coffee entirely. His eyes swept over me. “You. Are an angel.” He sounded skeptical, but mostly, I thought, because he thought he ought to be. And really, I couldn't blame him; I hardly looked the part.

“Was an angel. Now, I’m just Cas.”

“What kind of name is that for an angel?” he demanded, as if that were the sticking point here.

“It’s not. It’s a great name for me.” I drummed my fingers on the countertop. “If he comes to you, he’ll still be Castiel. Angel of Thursday.”

“I was born on Thursday,” Jimmy said, and looked surprised at himself. I wasn't; his soul knew Castiel already.

“Yeah, I know. So was Claire. There’s a reason for that.”

“You’re serious.”

I shrugged and said, “I don’t care if you believe me right now, James, OK? Just keep it in mind. I’m going to change things, but…it’s probably better to say I’m going to _try_. The past doesn’t like to be changed. So if I fail, you have to remember. If Castiel comes to you, _say no_. Tell Claire to say no.”

Jimmy’s eyes narrowed at me. “What about Claire?”

“She’s like you—she got it from you, it's hereditary. You both can house Castiel, and if you won’t take him he’ll ask her.” I caught his eyes and held them. “You have to understand, he’s…he’s an angel. He is _light_. His Grace, it’s the most beautiful thing you have ever seen, and he will promise you that you’re special, that you’re chosen. Don’t listen to him.” I closed my eyes for a second against the faulty memory of Grace, and when I opened them Jimmy was staring at me. He very clearly didn’t want to believe me, and just as clearly did anyway. “He will take you away from them, James, with no explanation, and the last words your little girl hears from your lips for most of a year will be _I'm not your father_.” Jimmy jerked as if I'd struck him. “I didn't know. I swear I didn't know what I was taking you away from,” I said. Silence filled the kitchen. A bar of sunlight fell through the window, touching both of us, Jimmy backed against the counter and me on the far side of the island.

“What happened to you?” Jimmy asked at last, and I couldn't help but laugh.

“Life,” I said, and he shook his head angrily.

“Come on. You were an angel, now you're not, how does that _happen_?”

“Someone told me that my orders were the wrong thing to do, and I listened,” I said. “Everything else followed from that.” I dug into my pocket for the piece of paper and held it out. After a second Jimmy took it. “If I fail, you'll hear from him first next December,” I said. “He'll come to you, tell you he needs to test your faith. September 2008 is when he'll need to take a vessel. So if he talks to you, as soon as you can call those numbers until one of them answers. The first one's me. If I'm alive, I'll take him.”

“And what if you're not?” Jimmy said, flat.

“He has to have your consent. You can set conditions—a time limit.” Castiel wouldn't be bound by anything but his word, but if he agreed to conditions at all he'd honor them...at least, as long as they didn't endanger Dean. But there was nothing I could do about that.

Jimmy studied the paper, smoothing it between his fingers. “I should be telling you you're nuts,” he said thoughtfully. I grinned.

“I have a friend who would say, search your feelings, you know it to be true.”

Jimmy gave me a rueful smile. “I didn't say I _was_ telling you you're nuts.”

“I'm not, James. I kind of wish I were.”

“Why are you calling me that? You have to know I go by Jimmy.”

I shrugged. “Pretty sure Jimmy's what your friends call you, and I...I took you from your family. In the end I got you killed.” Jimmy blinked at me, startled. “I don't think I have the right to pretend to be your friend.” He didn't reply. After a moment I continued, “I should go. I just...” I tried for a self-deprecating smirk, but I didn't think it took. “I thought it was my duty to warn you.”

Jimmy just watched me, and the expression on his face almost broke my control. He should have been angry, but he wasn't; he just looked sad. “Don't feel sorry for me,” I said, more harshly than I wanted to. “I made all my choices with my eyes open. I owed you the chance to do the same.” I pulled my gloves and hat from my pockets.

“Cas,” Jimmy said. I didn't look at him. “Cas, just let me help.” He sounded so sympathetic, compassionate even, and I didn't deserve it, not from him.

“If there's something you can do, I'll let you know,” I said to my hat. “Just be happy.” I started for the front door, but he stopped me with a word.

“Castiel.”

“That's not my name anymore.” It had been years since anyone called me _Castiel_ , even Chuck. I'll grant that a lot of that was because I yelled at him until he stopped.

“I think it is,” Jimmy said, and came to my side in a few steps. “Tell me you're doing the right thing,” he said, soft but firm. I made myself meet his eyes.

“The other option is for things to happen...the way they happened to me. So yes. I'm doing the right thing.”

He studied me for a second, and then nodded. “All right. Be careful. You're not doing this alone, are you?”

At that I managed a real smile. “Not this time,” I said.

Jimmy let me go.

On the walk back to the coffee shop I took three of my Vicodin. The hollow of my Grace ached fiercely, as if it had tried to reach for the part of Jimmy that knew Castiel—knew _me_ ; I should have realized that being close to him would set it off. I'd been ignoring it while we talked, but I couldn't anymore. By the time I pushed through the café door I was gritting my teeth against it, so bad that it was physical, cramps skittering across my shoulders and down my arms and settling in the long muscles of my thighs. Dean was leaning back in his booth, trying to look as if he didn't feel utterly out of place in the deliberately tattered luxury of the décor.

I got a drink and a huge, sticky pastry meant to amend my blood sugar. Dean eyed my mug dubiously, but didn't make any comments about it not even being coffee; I must have looked rattled. He let me get a couple bites in before he asked, “So, how'd it go?”

“You mean once he got over staring at me?” I shrugged. “Not bad. He didn't want to believe it, but...” I gestured at my face. Dean huffed a laugh. “And you know, I know things about him.”

Dean nodded, playing with his coffee cup. “What did you tell him?”

“As little as I could get away with,” I said, half-muffled by another bite of pastry. With food in my stomach it was at least easier to think around my aches. “Pretty much what not to do.”

Dean seemed to think that over before he asked, “What happened to his...your wife and kid, Cas?”

I could tell that my smile was twisted. “Nothing.” Dean raised his eyebrows at me. “No, really. At least not before _everything_ went bad. After...we tried to find them, but we never did.” I had felt it was my duty to Jimmy, but their house had been long abandoned by the time Dean and I got to it.

“If nothing happened to them,” Dean began.

“I didn't become a hunter because something happened to them.” Unlike the vast majority of hunters Dean knew. “I just...someone told me I was special, that I could make a difference.” I watched uncertainty flit over Dean's face and said, “Not you. But I believed it.” Jimmy had believed it, anyway. Though he had not actually understood what was being asked of him; the vessels rarely did. Even Dean and Sam hadn’t really comprehended, and they’d had far more information than most.

“So you just, what, left them?” Dean sounded incredulous. Of course he did; it was family.

“Yes,” I said simply.

Dean shook his head. “Jesus, Cas.”

“It wasn't the best decision I ever made,” I said. I was trying for wry, but only managed tired.

“You just left them, knowing what was out there?”

I set my teeth, stung on Jimmy's behalf. “No, I did not,” I said. “One, when I left I _didn't_ know, and two, part of the deal was that they'd be taken care of.” ( _You promised me my family would be OK. You promised you were gonna take care of them!_ Angels do not feel guilt; if they err, they’re punished, and nothing more is required. But those words made me guilty, and for the first time I consciously realized how much I was changing.)

Dean looked slightly mollified, but persisted, “Yeah, how'd that work out?”

“Everything went to hell by the end,” I said, wrapping my hands around my mug. The heat soothed my cramping fingers. “But it doesn't matter now. Saving Sam will change it all, and the version of me I saw today will never have to make that choice.”

Dean hesitated. I could see him considering. “If we change things,” he said at last, slowly, “is something gonna happen to you?”

I smiled at him. “No. At least, I don't think so.” I knew so, but the rules of time travel, insofar as I could still comprehend them, were another subject I couldn't discuss without explaining how I knew. “I'm _here_. If I could change things to erase myself, I wouldn't be able to come back and change them. It's called—”

“The grandfather paradox, yeah,” Dean said, and smirked at me. “What? I read sci-fi.”

I laughed, and it almost made me forget how much I hurt.

* * *

By that evening I felt better, though the number of pills I'd taken no doubt had something to do with it. I had, at least, managed to make sure Dean didn't see me take them. We went to a diner for dinner because Dean said he needed real food after spending the afternoon “drinking chick coffee”.

Sam waited until we'd ordered before he said, “So according to what I have, we have downtime.”

“How so?” Dean asked. He glanced around the restaurant idly, playing with his spoon.

“The original schedule was to spend a month looking for Ava,” Sam replied evenly. To his credit he didn't give me a dirty look, but it wasn't as if I couldn't tell he was unhappy. “But no dice. Since we're not going to be doing that, sounds like downtime to me.”

Dean eyed his brother and said, “Well, we could head to Vegas, it's about that time. It’s even after Christmas, rooms’ll be cheap.”

Sam made an exasperated face. “Actually, I was thinking about something Cas said earlier. He said no one cares about the, I don't know, the regular cases, the ones that aren't connected to my... _thing_. So what if we get ahead of the game for once?”

I quirked an eyebrow at him and he said, “If no one cares about the werewolf girl in San Francisco, how about we save her before she gets turned into a werewolf?”

Dean thought that over. “Huh,” he said. “OK. Vegas after.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

“I don’t think we can save the guy, from what we've got he’s probably been furry for, like, a year,” Dean said. “Makes you wonder why he waited so long to go after the girl of his dreams, huh?” He pursed his lips. “It'd be nice if you knew the chick’s last name, Cas.”

“Dean, it doesn't matter,” Sam said before I could repeat that he'd never told me, so how was I supposed to know? “If we keep her from getting bitten we'll never even have to talk to her.”

“Be good to know, just in case,” Dean said stubbornly.

Sam sighed. “I'll look into it,” he said.

I had never been to San Francisco as a mortal, and my one brief visit during my search for God had involved almost nothing in the way of interaction with the human population. I thought it was a lovely city, and though the weather was mild compared to areas further from the coast it was still cool enough that I could wear my long coat.

Sam had found the same pattern of attacks that had led the brothers here the first time around, but there was no report of a lawyer found dead in his office. Since I didn't know when exactly Madison had been turned, we had made sure to arrive several days before the dangerous period began for the month. We got a room in a hotel on the edge of Hunter’s Point, the area where the attacks had happened.

The first night, Sam stayed in doing research while Dean and I went out to bulk up the cash reserves. He hesitated over it, but then Sam rolled his eyes and said, “Dude, my idea we're here in the first place, OK? I'll still be here when you get back.” Dean flipped him off, and Sam smirked as we headed out the door.

We discussed strategy as we walked. Dean agreed to be the drunk one again, on the condition that I not make it quite as blatant that we had been playing our mark all along as I had with Cliff. “Not that the look on his face wasn’t hilarious, but I’m not in the mood for a bar fight tonight, OK?” I shrugged and agreed. I’d mostly done it to demonstrate to him that I knew what I was doing anyway.

We had a bit of a problem finding a bar that met Dean’s criteria; the neighborhood was run-down and most of the establishments we passed were the kind of place, he said, where no one would play pool with a stranger anyway. But eventually we found one that suited him, and spent a pleasant few hours relieving a pair of athletic young men of their extra cash. I didn’t like either of them much more than I’d liked Cliff, honestly, but I could see the wisdom of not starting a fight and carefully appeared to win my game with luck rather than skill. The marks weren’t happy, but they weren’t suspicious enough to make an issue of it either. Once I had the money I helped Dean, who was still pretending to be drunk, out of the bar. He leaned on me until we were outside and around the corner, and I tried not to show how much I enjoyed it. My Dean never touched me casually anymore; unless one of us was hurt or we were actively having sex we were rarely even close enough to touch. This Dean didn’t hold himself away from me as if he was afraid I’d distract him just by existing.

We were most of the way back to the hotel when Dean slowed a little, looking across the street at a young woman who was standing under a light. She wasn’t wearing nearly enough clothing for the weather.

“You know,” he said, “seems like our werewolf’s been hitting the working girls. Maybe we should do a little research of our own while we’re out.”

“Working girls?”

Dean gave me one of the looks of mild surprise that meant I’d missed a reference again. “Yeah, Cas. Working girls. Ladies of the evening, women of negotiable virtue. Hookers?”

“Oh. You mean she’s a prostitute.”

“Yes, I mean she’s a prostitute,” Dean said. “Unless you can think of another reason she’s out here in that outfit when it’s fifty degrees max. Come on.” He crossed the street; I trailed him.

Even under the chancy light from the streetlamp I could tell that the smile the girl assumed as we neared was more calculated than heartfelt. “Hey, sugar, lookin’ for someone?” she asked.

Dean grinned at her in return and said, “Think we’re looking for you.” He slipped his wallet out of his pocket for a second.

She gave him a once-over that was frankly assessing, then did the same to me. I nodded at her, but said nothing. “I don’t do group discounts,” she said.

“Wouldn’t ask you to. What I would like is this: I’m gonna pay you your usual, and in return you’re gonna come sit in a diner or something with us and answer a few questions about the girls who’ve gone missing the last couple months while you eat. That sound fair?”

Her professional flirtatiousness dropped like a stone and she glanced over her shoulder, looking for an escape route or an associate or both. “You cops or something?”

“Do I look like a cop? No strings attached here. You don’t want to talk to me, you don’t have to, I can go ask someone else.” He left unsaid _And pay them instead_ , but I could tell she heard it anyway. Dean took a deliberate step back from her, making it clear that he wasn’t going to stop her if she walked away. She studied him for a few seconds.

“Yeah, sure,” she said. “Cash up front, though.”

She said we could call her Sherry—I very much doubted it was her real name, any more than Lauren's had been Chastity—and led us to a dingy, neon-lit all night diner. The sole waitress inside eyed our little party with skepticism, but made no comment. Dean and I ended up sitting together across the booth from Sherry.

Once we had ordered, Sherry put her hands on the table. “So what do you want to know?” she asked. In the diner’s light she looked tired and her makeup garish, but I thought perhaps Dean had gotten lucky with his choice of informant; she didn’t appear to be on any mind-altering substances. I was pretty sure I’d be able to tell. I know the signs.

Dean was all business as he questioned her; Sherry replied with answers that matched well to the information we already had, adding details we hadn’t been able to gather from a distance. She knew which corners the victims had favored for their work, and mentioned that no one else had taken over any of the vacated spots yet. When Dean asked why she shrugged and said, “Most of ‘em weren’t good spots anyway, and would you wanna go stand where a girl was when she got eaten?”

“Eaten?” Dean asked.

“Yeah, that’s what’s been going around anyway. Parts of ‘em have been missing when the cops find ‘em, with teeth marks. Eaten. Kinda creepy. One guy’s saying it was coyote, but I’ll tell you what, coyotes don’t go after people like that unless they’re sick. I think it’s a wolf.”

“In the city?” Dean said, glancing at me.

“All kinds of stuff lives in the city if you know where to look,” Sherry said. “Plus…OK, you’re gonna say I’m crazy, but you notice when it’s been happening?”

“Every month or so,” Dean said.

“Yeah, but _when_?” She looked back and forth between us.

“I give up,” I said, and Dean nodded.

“Full moon,” Sherry said. “Earliest one was like four days before the full moon.”

“So you don’t mean a wolf-wolf,” Dean said. He was very carefully not looking surprised.

Sherry picked up one of her French fries and gestured with it. “Told you it sounded crazy,” she said.

“Not as much as you might think,” Dean said seriously. “And you know, in a couple days it’s gonna be that time again. You might want to think about staying in.”

Sherry made a sour face. “I have been. But I'm not the only one who gets a vote, so you know how it goes.”

“Yeah,” Dean said.

Not long after that we finished our food; Dean paid the bill and we left. Outside the door we said perfunctory goodbyes. Sherry gave Dean a slow smile and said, “You want to do any more business, you know where I am.”

“I'll keep it in mind,” Dean said. We watched for a few seconds as she walked off.

“You could, uh,” I began. Dean punched me in the arm.

“Come on. I don't pay for it. Besides, she was looking at you too.” I eyed him sideways and he grinned at me. “Seriously, she was.”

“Sure she was, Dean,” I said.

* * *

When we got to the room, Sam was in the shower. His computer sat open on the bed he’d claimed.

“Sam, we’re back,” Dean called.

“Be done in a second,” Sam replied, muffled by the water and the bathroom door. “Found some stuff.”

Sam emerged a few minutes later, rubbing his hair with one of the motel towels. (I had real towels in my cabin, huge fluffy things I liberated from a home supply store. There was never enough hot water, but at least I could have towels that weren’t totally inadequate. Dean rolled his eyes every time he saw them.) “I think I found Madison,” Sam said.

“Great,” Dean said, taking over the bathroom with his sleeping clothes under his arm. He left the door half-open so he could hear.

Sam settled against the wall at the head of his bed and pulled his computer onto his lap. “She got turned by her neighbor, or _will get_ turned—we better hope it hasn’t happened yet, since there’s no cure. Either way that means she probably lives near here, since the neighbor wouldn’t want to go very far to hunt. There are a couple of better neighborhoods that border on this one, the kind of place where a person on a single income could find affordable rent. And you said she works in a lawyer’s office.” He typed for a second, then swiveled the laptop around on his knees so I could see the screen.

On it was a picture of a pretty brown-haired young woman. She was smiling, though it looked like the kind of smile people come up with for official photographers.

“Madison Ledoux,” Sam said. “She lives in a duplex converted from a Victorian house, and works at a small legal firm.”

“OK,” I said. “Well, she’s pretty, and when Dean told me about her he made a point of mentioning she was…I think the phrase he used was ‘seriously hot’.”

“I can hear you, Cas,” Dean called from the bathroom.

* * *

Madison Ledoux’s home was on the ground floor of a building that had probably been grand when originally built. Her neighborhood looked better off than Hunter’s Point, more houses with tiny yards than apartment blocks, and Dean theorized that that was why the werewolf was hunting further from home. “Easier to find people on the streets late at night in a sketchy area,” he said. “Not just the hookers, either, but they’d be easy marks.”

We parked at the curb outside the house and regarded it in silence for a while. Finally Dean sighed and said, “Well, at least a stakeout’s easier with three guys than two. We can trade shifts.”

Sam made a noise of unhappy agreement.

The first night was unutterably boring. Madison got home while Sam and I were watching; her neighbor, our prime werewolf suspect, had been out precisely once that day, perfectly human the whole time—Sam insisted we had to see him transform because “neighbor” could have meant any of several people in the area. Dean wasn't pleased about it and neither was I, but I had to admit I wasn't sure. We kept lookout until after her light went off near midnight, and then returned to the motel to get some rest.

Afterward I realized I must have fallen asleep almost immediately, but at the time it felt like lying awake for hours, so long that I expected dawn. Noises kept intruding on my consciousness--real noises, probably, filtered through my sleeping mind until they sounded sinister and stealthy, and I wanted to get up and check but I couldn't move. Dread crept up and down my spine like spiders' legs. When the door swung silently open, it was almost a relief.

All I could see was a man-sized shape, dark-on-dark, even as Dean and Sam's sleeping forms were perfectly clear. It drifted across the room, moving with the faintest shush of feet on cheap carpet. I tried to get up, to get between the shape and Dean, to even call a warning, but nothing _worked_. Until the shape reached Dean's bedside and leaned over him like a lover preparing to wake the beloved, and then I could see it—Alastair, out of any stolen human body, as he appeared in Hell when I swept him aside to seize Dean and carry him away, and the demon turned his misshapen head to meet my eyes and _smiled_ and placed one hand tenderly on the side of Dean's neck, and Dean's eyes flew open and he had just enough time to draw a startled breath before Alastair tore his throat out—

“ _Cas!_ ”

I jolted awake, choking on a shout and swinging at the shadow looming over me; fortunately I was too caught in the dream to aim right and Dean dodged it enough that I barely grazed him, though he had to take a clumsy step back to catch his balance. Meanwhile I lost mine and flailed, missing falling off the couch by inches. I was still breathing hard, trying to put my thoughts back in order, when Sam clicked the light on. We all blinked in the sudden brightness. Dean was rubbing at the spot I'd hit, more from habit than need.

“You were shouting,” he said after a second.

I sat up and scraped my hands back through my hair. “Yeah. Sorry.” It had been a while since anyone woke me from one of the really bad dreams; I had learned early that decking bed partners made them less likely to have sex with me again so I mostly didn't let them sleep in my bed. Dean had been able to do it safely, before we settled in different cabins. ( _There're plenty of empties, Cas, pick one. You can set it up however you want. But you're not bringing your girls back here._ After that we rarely spent the whole night together.) But this Dean, of course, didn't know how.

There was another pause, during which I fought my way out of my blankets till I was sitting on the couch the right way. I wanted to hide my face from the way Dean was looking at me, full of worry; he was already half frantic about Sam and here I was adding to his burdens.

“Was it…just a bad dream?” Sam asked, oddly tentative.

I climbed to my feet, ignoring the way Dean put a hand out as if to catch me when I swayed, and bent over my bag where it sat on the low table between couch and television. “It was only a dream,” I said, pawing through my clothes and sundries with no regard for how they ended up. “I’m not actually psychic, remember? I’m just from the future.” I pulled the box out, spilling a few rolled pairs of socks, and flipped the lid open to survey the contents. They weren’t encouraging, almost everything I had a straight painkiller and the one exception would leave me out of commission for far too long; we had a hunt. “Screw it,” I muttered, and extracted the Vicodin bottle.

“Cas,” Dean said, suddenly irritated; I ignored him and tapped two pills into my palm, hesitated and added a third. I dry-swallowed them as I stuffed the cotton back in, trapping the remaining pills against the bottom so they wouldn't rattle.

“I need the sleep,” I said, trying not to sound pissed off, and shoved the box back into my bag. Dean wouldn't touch it there; he and Sam had a couple of rules that were basically inviolate, and one of them was that you didn't go into anyone else's personal bag.

“You need to be on the ball, we have a werewolf to track tomorrow night.”

“I'll be fine by tomorrow night,” I said shortly, and went about rearranging myself on the couch with more concentration than was strictly necessary. When I pulled a fold of the blanket over my head Dean said, “Fine, whatever,” and I heard him moving. A few seconds later Sam turned the light off again.

The Vicodin made me warm enough to go back to sleep.

* * *

I dragged myself out of my blankets in late morning to find the room empty. There was a cup of coffee on the table; it was pointedly cold. They hadn't left a note.I sighed and went to take a shower.

Dean returned as I was rummaging in my bag for my toiletries, shirtless. He was wearing his suit and a sour expression, and he closed the door without waiting for Sam. He said nothing until I straightened and turned towards the bathroom.

“You take too many pills,” he said.

“Hello to you too, Dean,” I replied. He hiked an eyebrow and I sighed. “The last time we had this conversation there was a lot of shouting, and cracked ribs. I’d rather skip that this time.”

Dean still didn’t reply until I glanced at him; his angry expression was changing to something more complex and finally he said, “You mean I cracked your ribs.”

“Yes,” I said. He didn’t quite flinch. “In your defense, I was trying to break one of your fingers at the time.”

“Jesus,” Dean said, and started to loosen his tie. “It’s like pulling teeth. _Why_ were you trying to break my finger?”

“So you’d let go of my box,” I said, jerking my chin at my bag in illustration. “Look, I need to shave if you want me to look respectable.”

"It messes you up," Dean said.

I set my bag down on the free inches of counter space and said, "I make sure I'm straight enough to be effective. I'm not an idiot, Dean." There was a long pause, which I took advantage of to pull out my razor and shaving cream. (Once I lost control of my vessel's, my _body's,_ baser functions, it took a few weeks for Dean to realize I wasn't letting my beard grow because I wanted to, but because I didn't really understand how to stop it; fortunately the physical operation was easy, once he explained its purpose.)

“OK, that’s great, but what I _meant_ was that it’s bad for you,” Dean said at last. When I looked at him in surprise he shrugged. “Your liver, your kidneys, all sorts of stuff. You can screw yourself up. I stopped reading when I got to the part about destroying the body’s ability to regulate temperature.” He said the last part like a quote, no doubt from whatever website Sam had helped him find.

I turned back to the mirror and reached for the taps, because I couldn’t watch his face. “I told you I have chronic pain,” I said, as the water ran over my hand.

“Yeah,” Dean said slowly. “Do you have, I don't know, shrapnel or something? Like in your chest?”

I realized I was rubbing at my breastbone with the hand that held the safety razor and took it away, trying not to let the motion look hasty. “Part of me...got torn out,” I said, watching the water run. “It hurts.”

“What _part_ , Cas?” He sounded closer and I glanced at him just long enough to realize that he was leaning in the bathroom door now, his suit jacket discarded.

“Not a physical part.” The water was warming up, finally. “It's not important. It hurts, and it's why I have bad dreams.” True, that, in the sense that losing my Grace was what caused me to dream at all. “And I've tried a lot of things, Dean, and I know what works, and I know how to handle it, OK? I'm not trying to tell you I'm not messed up. This isn't denial. But I _function_. And I will keep functioning just as long as you need me.” I'd have done better if I were getting laid; endorphins are wonderful things. But artificial replacements would do.

For another long moment neither of us spoke. Dean stood in the arch of the door like a statue and I leaned over the sink, clutching the razor and staring at the hot water, pretending fascination with the curl of the wispy steam.

“Fine,” Dean said at last, and to my immense surprise he didn't spit the word at me. “Just...I'm gonna be pissed if we have to haul you in for an OD, got it?”

“You won't,” I said. In my peripheral vision Dean nodded.

“Should we try'n wake you up, next time?”

“If it's bothering you, sure,” I said, and scooped water into my palm to splash it onto my chin. “But it's not a good idea to be in the line of fire while you do it.”

“Yeah, I figured that one out,” Dean said with a sigh. Then he straightened, and his tone got brisk, dropping the subject with an almost-audible thud. “Sam should be back soon. Three of us gotta make plans, because tonight's the night.”

* * *

The early winter twilight was well over when Madison stepped out the door of her house and turned to lock it. She paused on the steps, scanning the street, but her eyes passed over the Impala without catching on it; Dean had parked a careful half-block away.

“Looks like you’re up, Sammy,” Dean said, and Sam sighed. We’d drawn straws for who watched Madison while the other two stayed on Glen, and Sam had lost; he wasn’t complaining, but only because he’d held the straws. Sam waited until Madison was most of the way to the corner before he climbed out of the car and set out to follow her. She had a car of her own, but from what we could tell rarely used it. I moved into the passenger seat as Sam turned the corner in pursuit.

From where we'd parked we could see both the front door of the duplex and Glen's private rear entrance, but the latter was dark, lacking a light of its own. Sam's slouched form had barely vanished when Dean said, “OK, let's go in.”

I turned my head and he shrugged. “Too easy to miss him if we stay out here. Inside we can tie him to a chair till he changes,” he said.

“I wasn’t arguing,” I said mildly, and Dean rolled his eyes.

“We'll see if we can get a good look from the porch,” he said.

It turned out we could; the apartment was small and the curtains not quite properly closed. Dean had to lean against the wall to see inside. “Dude, I think he's drunk,” he said after a second, very quietly. “That'd make this easier.”

“Not really, it'll burn right out once he changes,” I said.

Dean made a face that was disgusted but not surprised, and nodded. “OK, go around to the back door.”

I spent the next two hours or so being very bored and a little uncomfortable; my feet didn't ache, thanks to the pill I'd taken, but it was a chilly evening. The tiny sliver of Glen’s living room I could see didn't include wherever he was sitting, so I had to assume Dean had eyes on him. The monotony was broken only once, when Glen wavered into the small kitchen to pull a white can of soda from his fridge. He took several tries to get it open. I watched, frowning, as he drank it; his movements were uncoordinated and loose, but for some reason he didn't look drunk to me. I hadn't yet put my finger on the difference when he left the kitchen, one hand on the wall for balance.

I wasn't dozing, but my phone vibrating in my pocket made me twitch anyway; I pulled it out and flipped it open. “Cas,” Dean said, barely loud enough for his phone to register it. “He's been out of sight for five minutes, I think it's time to go in.”

“Right,” I replied, just as quietly, and slipped my hand into my pocket for the little folder of lock-picks. I never got to use them.

The bang from my left startled me badly and I spun, reaching into my coat for my gun. My eyes had mostly adjusted to the dark, so the dark shape crouched on the ground had enough detail for me to see that he'd changed. Glen didn’t look much different, but his eyes glinted in what little light there was and when his lips drew back in a snarl I could see the fangs. We shared a moment of mutual surprise, me with my hand on the butt of my Beretta and him catching his balance from his fall—or jump, possibly; he'd come out of a window that was hinged at the top, and from the looks of it he hadn't expected the crash of it hitting the frame in his wake any more than I had.

“Cas!” Dean exclaimed from my phone. The sound of his voice broke the spell. Even as I drew my gun Glen leapt for me. He bulled into me, and I felt a flash of panic as we tumbled; I didn't actually know for sure that I was immune to a werewolf's contagion, and regardless his teeth, grown long and sharp, could do plenty of damage on their own. I chose to drop the phone rather than the gun as we fell, but it did me little good to remain armed. Glen's weight fouled my aim for a long second—and then was gone, and he bounded away from me.

Dean burst around the corner of the house, his gun out and aimed. Glen glanced back to growl as he ran, and Dean shot after him; if it hit Glen made no sound, and a blink later he was gone. Dean hurried over to me as I pushed myself up.

“Cas,” Dean said, his voice hard and so very familiar. I half expected him to ask if I knew where Risa was. He glanced down at me, just enough to make sure I was moving before returning his attention to the dark where Glen might be lurking.

“I'm fine,” I said quickly. “Go, I'll catch up.”

Dean hesitated for only a beat before he nodded and jogged in the direction Glen had gone.

It was the work of moments to find my phone, which was thankfully undamaged; I shoved it in my pocket again as I got to my feet and followed the sound of Dean running. I caught up to him a block and a half later, standing at a corner and looking over his shoulder for me anxiously. “Dunno which way from here,” he said as soon as I was within earshot.

“I think we should stick together,” I said.

Dean looked torn for a moment but reluctantly nodded. He said, “We could cover more ground apart but he knows us now. Why’d he run, anyway? He had you down.”

“He wants to lead us away from his home,” I said. “He’s running on instinct right now and he didn’t want to risk going up against two of us at once.”

“I guess that’s good,” Dean said grimly. “Means he might circle back around so we can spot him.”

And he did. Over the course of the next hour or so we got repeated glimpses, always at distances that made it impractical to take a shot, wandering back and forth across the streets in no particular pattern. I got the feeling he was trying to separate us, but we were both used to keeping track of a partner in hostile territory; the fact that I wasn't Sam didn't dim Dean's awareness of me, and for me, well, it was just like old times. Though at least there was only _one_ thing lurking in the dark that could infect us with something, rather than hordes.

We were halfway down an alley that would have felt even more familiar without the struggling streetlight at the end of it when Dean held up a hand to stop me and pulled his phone from his pocket.

“What, Sam?” He listened to Sam's reply, his lips thinning. “Well, that's not good because Wolf Boy is out here too. Yeah. Because we're on it, and you're on her, that's why. Where are you?” The pause was brief, and Dean's expression went even more unhappy as I watched. “I'm pretty sure we're not far from there,” he said. “Keep your eyes peeled, Sammy, this might get even more interesting. Call me when she gets home, OK?” After another beat, he said, “Yeah, you too,” and hung up. As he pocketed his phone, Dean said, “Sam says Madison's on her way home, walking. You did say she got turned on her way home from a friend's place, right?”

I nodded, and he sighed, “We have got to catch this asshole.”

A few minutes later, we caught another sight of Glen—but this one was different. It started out the kind of tease we'd been getting since he fled his house, but as he was bounding back into cover Glen froze and turned his head, like someone trying to pin down a sound.

Or like a dog, tracking a scent.

He pivoted where he stood and began to run in earnest, back towards his and Madison's house this time. Dean and I ran after him, Dean cursing in a steady undertone, and that at least was unfamiliar because my Dean never wasted his breath like that anymore, not when there was a chase on. Glen tried to lose us, but was hampered by an obvious unwillingness to deviate from his goal; still, he was enough faster that we fell behind, slowly. When Glen turned a corner a block ahead, Dean broke stride enough to get his phone out again and flipped it open, stabbing the speed dial without looking. We ran as it rang, and Dean started talking right over Sam's greeting when he answered. “Heads up, Sammy, Wolf Boy is comin' in hot. Get her under cover if you can.”

Two blocks later we sprinted around another corner to see Sam and Madison at the other end of the block. Sam had his hand under his coat as if he were resting it on his gun, and Madison’s posture was tense; I didn’t know her well enough to judge whether she was afraid of Sam or of something he’d told her. There was no sign of Glen, at first, but then Sam and Madison both turned at the sound of boots on the sidewalk, and that was when Glen leaped. He burst from a narrow breezeway between two buildings, just out of Sam’s peripheral vision.

But just barely _in_ Madison’s, which saved her from the first rush; she caught the motion out of the corner of her eye and jerked away from it on instinct; instead of bowling her over flat Glen only caught her shoulder and she staggered and twisted with the impact but kept her feet. “Oh _fuck_ this,” Dean groaned beside me, reaching for his gun as we crossed the last few feet.

Madison shrieked as Glen spun and lunged for her again; with less distance to cover her reflexes couldn’t beat his and they went down together in a tangle. She managed to turn enough that he wasn’t right on top of her, but that wasn’t going to help for long. Sam had had to jump out of the way to avoid falling too and ended up across from us, his gun out, staring at Glen’s back.

None of us could get a clean shot, but it was clear that Madison wasn’t going to be able to hold Glen off for long, though she was giving it a valiant effort, her forearm wedged under his chin to keep his teeth away from her face and throat. She was panting with exertion and fear, her eyes wide and dark and her face bloodlessly pale.

Beside me Dean flicked the safety back on and shoved his gun away with hasty hands and barked, “Cas, on three, you get him!”

“Dean—” Sam began, but Dean said, “One. Two. Three!” and we both moved. I took two long strides and twisted one hand in the fabric of Glen’s shirt, using my momentum to wrench him up and away from Madison; Dean dove for her and knocked her to the side, hunching over her. That was all I had time to notice as Glen twisted in my grip, swinging for my eyes with short, brutal claws. I got my arm up just in time and the claws caught briefly in the fabric of my coat sleeve. My other hand slipped, but I didn’t have time to panic because just as my fingers loosened and came free there was the sound of a shot and Glen yelped. His head turned to Sam but the movement was jerky and slow.

Sam fired again. Glen gasped and collapsed where he stood. By the time he hit the sidewalk he looked fully human again.

“Oh God,” Madison moaned, the first coherent words I'd heard her speak. “What the hell was that? What the hell?”

“It's OK,” Sam said, his voice low and soothing. He crouched to be closer to her level as Dean shifted to let her sit up and get her bearings.

“Are you kidding?” Madison demanded. “That...that guy was trying to—I don't know, _eat_ me!”

Sam nodded and said, “But you're all right now. You should probably call the police—” Dean made a face, which fortunately Madison didn't see “—but would you like us to take you home first?”

Madison pulled in a deep breath, held it for a second, and then let it out in a gust. “No,” she said steadily. I was impressed. “No, I should stay here. Just maybe not... _right_ here.” She pushed herself up, ignoring Sam's offered hand, and turned. Neither Dean nor I got in her line of sight in time and her eyes widened.

“Holy fuck,” she said. “I know that guy. That's _Glen._ ” She thought it over for a second and then said, “But he was...he was...”

 “Yeah, he was,” Dean said. “But you can't tell the cops that, OK? They'll think you're nuts.”

“What do I tell them, then?” she asked, her voice getting higher with every word. She clutched her arms to her chest like she was trying to keep warm.

“Tell them he attacked you,” Sam said. “Just don't mention what he looked like when he did it.”

“You're not really from the FBI,” Madison said, and Sam offered her a sheepish smile.

“I...no. I'm sorry.”

“It's fine,” Madison replied, her gaze wandering back towards Glen.

We all heard it at about the same time: sirens, coming fast. Dean caught his brother's eye and Sam shrugged. Dean nodded and said, “Look, we're gonna go, you'll be fine, OK? Just tell the cops everything except what he looked like—don't try to lie to them. It'll be fine.”

“But—wait, no, what about you?” Madison protested.

“We can't stay,” Sam said.

Madison looked like she wanted to argue, but knew it wouldn't help. We cut down the breezeway Glen had been lurking in as the first flashing lights turned onto the block. I glanced over my shoulder, and the last I saw of Madison was her silhouette under the streetlight as she waited for the officers.

Halfway back to the Impala, Dean said, “So first time around, Sam hit that?”

“Dean,” Sam said, pained.

Dean grinned and nudged him with an elbow. “Sorry you missed it.”

“Since she was turned into a werewolf the first time, I'll deal,” Sam said dryly. We walked a few more steps before he went on, “We should probably check out first thing in the morning in case the cops start asking around.”

* * *

We spent two nights in a small town in Colorado before Sam found another case, a haunting in Connecticut which took less time to resolve than it might have otherwise because I remembered a few useful details. ( _She thought we were boyfriends. She was hot, too. Anyway it turned out her mom had been keeping the ghost locked down for, like, fifty years, but then she had a stroke._ ) Dean made me some badges and an Iowa driver’s license claiming I was James Kirk—Sam rolled his eyes at that, for some reason, but I kind of liked sharing a name, at least, with Jimmy.

I mentioned, casually, that the anti-possession charms they wore could be tattooed instead. To my mild surprise Dean did not bodily drag Sam into the nearest tattoo parlor, but a week or so later they both went. I claimed to have mine somewhere unmentionable. “We should wear the charms anyway,” Sam said thoughtfully. “Double layer of defense.”

* * *

“OK, so, checking Milwaukee paid off,” Sam announced. He dropped a sheet of paper on the table. “Bank robbery. Longtime employee, never-in-a-million-years type. He beat the security guard unconscious, pulled all the cash he could get his hands on, and then went home and killed himself. They haven't recovered the cash, though.”

“Sounds hopeful,” Dean said, pulling the paper around so he could see it. It was a printout of a newspaper article.

“Yeah, and get this: the security guard swears that the guy who robbed the bank? Wasn't himself.” Sam leaned over to tap a line in the story and quoted, “'It wasn't Juan. Juan Morales was a good guy. Whoever robbed that bank, it just looked like Juan.'”

Dean smiled. “Sounds like a shapeshifter to me.”

* * *

It ended up being amazingly easy; the bank that had been robbed sat on the same branch of the sewer system as two other banks and a jewelry store. Sam went into the store with his camera phone and got shots of all the employees under pretext of asking for advice on which ring to buy, and then we followed the shapeshifter back to Helena William’s home. It wasn’t watching for us, having no reason to expect it had been noticed. Sam ended up on the wrong end of a chokehold, briefly, but Helena herself, an older lady who was probably quite pleasant when she wasn’t scared out of her mind, was able to call the police and report she’d accidentally killed a burglar.

* * *

“ _Because it’s impossible_ ,” I said, too loud, and wrenched my bag open with unnecessary force.

“You don’t actually know that,” Sam said. He sounded a little frustrated, which I felt was only fair.

“As a matter of fact, I do,” I retorted. “There is no way. I don’t know what visited that woman, but it _was not_ an angel.”

“Cas, come on. She’s living in a locked ward and she’s totally at peace.”

“Because that sounds completely sane,” Dean put in. We both turned to look at him and he held up his hands defensively. “Never mind.”

Sam turned back to me. “Blinding light, feelings of spiritual ecstasy, the works.”

I paused with one hand on my toiletries bag. “Wait, she was blinded?” My stomach turned over. I couldn’t have changed things that much, could I?

“No,” Sam said, sounding puzzled. “Bright white light, that’s what she saw, but she’s fine now except for being locked away.”

“Oh.” I straightened. “Did she tell you the angel’s name?”

“No,” said Sam again. “Apparently he didn’t mention it.”

I shook my head. Sam sighed and said, “Cas, there’s ten times as much lore about angels as about anything else we’ve ever hunted.”

Dean said, “Yeah, and there’s a ton of lore on unicorns too. In fact I hear that they ride on silver moonbeams and shoot rainbows out of their ass.”

Sam sat down on his bed. “You mean there’s no such thing as unicorns?” he said, deadpan.

“What about the man she stabbed?” I asked, just to change the subject.

“Name was Carl Gully. She said she stabbed him because the angel told her he was evil.”

“Was he?” Dean asked.

“Not that I could find,” Sam replied. “He didn’t have a criminal record, he worked at the campus library, had lots of friends, was a churchgoer.”

“Sounds to me like Gloria’s your standard-issue whacko,” Dean said. “She wouldn't exactly be the first nutjob in history to get stabby in the name of religion.”

“She wouldn't even be the first in _this town_ , and that’s kind of my point,” Sam said. “This is the second case. Little odd, don't you think?”

“Of course it's odd, and probably supernatural,” I said. “But it can't be an angel.”

“Why not?” Sam asked, sounding only mildly curious.

“Because there's no such thing, Sam,” Dean said, which was helpful; I wasn't sure I could flat-out deny the existence of angels and have it look convincing.

“How do you know that?”

Dean shrugged. “Because I've never seen one?”

“Dean,” Sam huffed, “the three of us have seen things most people couldn't even dream about.”

“Exactly. With our own eyes, that's hard proof, okay?” Dean waved his hands in illustration. “But in all this time I have never seen anything that looks like an angel. And don't you think that if they existed that we would have crossed paths with them? Or at least _know_ someone that crossed paths with them? No. This is a demon, or a spirit, you know, they find people a few fries short of a happy meal, and they trick them into killing someone.”

“Look,” I said. “What did you find when you checked Gloria's apartment?”

“Well, it’s more what I didn’t find—no sulfur, no EMF,” Sam replied.

“No fluffy white wing feathers?” Dean asked innocently.

Sam gave him a halfhearted glare. “She did say the angel gave her a sign, next to Gully's door.”

“Great,” Dean said. “Let's go check it out.”

* * *

Dean thought it was funny that the dead man hadn’t taken down his Christmas decorations. He kept chuckling about it as Sam picked the lock on the cellar door.

When we found the first body, he stopped.

There were at least six skulls.

“So much for the innocent church-going librarian,” Sam said, grim.

Dean nodded and said, “Whatever told Gloria about this, it knew what it was talking about.”

* * *

“Three college students have disappeared from campus in the last year,” Sam announced when he and Dean returned. “All of them were last seen at the library.”

“Where Gully worked,” I said, and Dean nodded. “I have news, too. Whatever it is, it’s struck again. It was on the police radio. I wrote down the victim’s address—the killer walked up to the door and knocked, and when the victim answered just stabbed him.”

“And then went to the police station and confessed?” Sam asked.

“Yup.”

“Roma Downey made him do it?” said Dean. I had never managed to get him to explain why he thought there was an angel named Roma Downey, but I nodded anyway.

“Great,” Dean said, sighing. “Let’s go.”

* * *

Frank Halloway had also lived alone, and hadn’t been in the habit of locking his windows; it took all of fifteen seconds to get one open far enough that we could get through. The crime scene team had come and gone; with a confession on their hands they’d made quick work of it. We didn’t go near the front door, where the crime scene tape was. Sam sat down at Frank’s computer while Dean and I looked through the rest of the house. We found nothing particularly interesting, so after twenty minutes or so we drifted back to where Sam sat.

“You guys find anything?” he asked, most of his attention still on the screen.

“Frank liked his catalogue shopping, but that’s about all we got,” Dean said. “You?”

“Nothing much, unless I can get this encrypted file…aha, there!” He stabbed at the keyboard and grinned. “Not encrypted anymore…God.”

“What?” Dean demanded.

“Well, he’s got all these emails, hundreds of them, to this lady named Jennifer,” Sam said slowly. Dean and I exchanged looks. “This lady who’s thirteen years old.”

I grimaced. “Oh, I don’t want to hear this,” Dean protested.

“Looks like they met in a chat room,” Sam continued. “These emails are pretty personal. Look at that.” He tapped the screen. “Setting up a time and place to meet.” He twisted to look at us. “They were going to meet today.”

“Well, I guess if you’re gonna stab someone, good timing,” Dean said. “This is weird. It’s like it’s a do-gooder.”

“He’s right,” I said reluctantly. “Most spirits just want revenge, but this one, it’s almost like…”

“Like an avenging angel?” Sam asked, with a pointed look. I made an unhappy face and he pressed, “How else do you explain this? Three guys, not connected to each other, stabbed through the heart? Two of them were world-class pervs, and I’ll bet if you dug deep enough into the other one—” Dean turned away from the conversation, his attention apparently caught by something.

“Sam, do you really think an angel needs to ask a human being for help? If an angel wanted these men dead, I’m pretty sure it’d be capable of killing them itself.” Assuming one was allowed, or cared, at least. I wouldn’t even have had to take a vessel, much less incite humans to murder.

“God works in mysterious ways,” Sam said.

“Hey,” Dean said, looking down at the piece of paper he’d picked up. Sam and I turned to him. “You said Carl Gully was a churchgoer.” Sam nodded. “What was the name of the church?”

“Our Lady of the Angels,” Sam said promptly.

Dean rolled his eyes and replied, “Of _course_ it was.” He held up the flier. “Looks like Frank went to the same one.”

* * *

The priest was a pleasant man called Father Reynolds. He was delighted at the prospect of three new parishioners, and I felt a little bad for deceiving him; if he were one of the occasional priests who knew about the supernatural, he showed no sign of it. I contributed little, since Dean and Sam were quite capable of turning the discussion to the murders without my help, though I had to restrain the urge to look disgusted when the priest said that he believed in angels and Sam threw me a meaningful look. Sam waved at a painting on the wall and said, “Father, that’s Michael, right?”

“That’s right,” Father Reynolds said. The painting was a reproduction; it showed Michael standing above a prostrate Lucifer, preparing to drive a spear into his back. Aside from the fact that Michael’s vessel did not actually resemble any he had ever taken—and the confrontation hadn’t happened while they were in vessels anyway—it was not a bad depiction of that last fight. “The archangel Michael, with the flaming sword. The fighter against demons, holy force against evil.” He said it with no small amount of relish.

“Angels aren’t…the Hallmark card version, like everybody thinks? They’re fierce. Vigilant,” Sam said. I watched him sideways in growing annoyance, but he ignored me.

The priest shrugged. “Well, personally I like to think of them as more loving than wrathful, but yes, a lot of Scripture paints angels as God’s warriors. _An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord_ —”

“— _shone round about them_ ,” I continued for him. “ _And they were sore afraid_.”

“A King James man,” Reynolds said mildly. “Luke two-nine.” He turned towards the door and we followed. “All I know is, there's probably a reason the first thing an angel always says is _Fear not._ ” I hadn't. It had hardly seemed necessary; they'd been shooting at me, after all.

“So angels aren't...cuddly,” Sam persisted.

“Of course not,” the priest answered. Sam looked triumphant for a second. “I'm pretty sure they aren't down here talking to us either. We don't live in that kind of age.”

Nor would we, for at least another few years. Or, preferably, never.

We came out onto the steps of the church, Dean turning his collar up against the chill. It wasn't quite cold enough to snow in Providence, but our breath steamed in the air.

“Well, thank you for speaking with us, Father,” Sam said.

“It's my pleasure,” Father Reynolds replied. “I hope to see you again.” I doubted he'd be terribly surprised if he didn't, but he struck me as willing to consider the possibility.

The steps were broad and we had come up one side; descending, we had a different angle. There was a pile of items on the parapet near the bottom: flowers drooping sadly in the chilly damp, and tall candles in glass to protect their tiny flames from the breeze.

“Hey, Father, what's all that for?” Dean asked, waving his hand at the collection. A crucifix stood guard over the whole thing.

“Oh, that's for Father Gregory,” the priest replied. He sighed. “He was a priest here.”

“Was,” Dean said, not so much a question.

“He passed away right on these steps,” said Reynolds.

* * *

Father Gregory had been shot for the keys to the middle-aged station wagon he and Reynolds shared for running errands and visiting their parishioners. Reynolds was clearly pained by the memory. Once he’d gone back into the church, we stood contemplating the offerings.

“This is starting to make sense,” Dean said, picking up the little picture that I assumed showed Gregory. “Devoted priest dies a violent death, that’s vengeful spirit right there.” Sam looked unhappy, but Dean didn't appear to notice, warming to his theme. “And he was the stiffs' priest, he knew things about them that nobody else knew, right?”

“Then again,” Sam said, “Father Reynolds started praying for help about two months ago. Just about when things started happening.” He took the picture from Dean and leaned it back against the candle.

“Maybe we should just go look at Gregory's grave,” I said. I really wasn't in the mood for another round of the discussion, but I might have known Dean wasn't going to let it go.

“Seriously, Sam, what's your deal?” he asked, as we turned to reenter the church.

“What do you mean?” Sam asked in return.

“Well I'll admit I'm a bit of a skeptic, and clearly Cas is too.” They both glanced at me; I shrugged. I didn't feel like getting into _that_ argument. “But since when are you all Mr. 700 Club? From the get-go you've been all over this angel crap, and I mean, what's next? Are you going to start praying or something?”

“I do,” Sam said. Dean didn't stop walking, but the look he gave his brother was sharp and surprised. “I pray every day. I have for a long time.”

Dean mulled that over for a few steps. “Huh,” he said at last. “The things you learn about a guy.”

We didn't speak again until we'd found the entrance to the crypt where Father Gregory was buried; it seemed Reynolds had had other business to occupy him, as he was nowhere in evidence. There were high, narrow windows along one side of the hallway that led to the crypt proper, plenty of light to see the many angel statues that stood in niches along the walls.

Dean and I went into the crypt proper; the first I realized that Sam had lingered in the hallway was the quiet, distinctive thump of a body hitting the floor.

“Sam?” Dean said sharply. I turned in time to see him vanish back out into the hall. “Sammy? Sammy, hey!”

He was reaching for Sam’s shoulder when Sam jerked awake, suddenly wide-eyed.

“Sam, you OK?” Dean asked, his voice full of forced calm.

“Yeah,” Sam said. He was staring at one of the angel statues. “Yeah, I’m OK.”

“Uh-huh,” Dean replied, fishing in his pocket. He pulled out his flask. “You saw it, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. Yeah. Dean, I saw an angel.”

 _Oh fuck,_ I thought, as Dean unscrewed the cap. He offered the flask to Sam, saying, “All right. Here.”

“I don’t want a drink,” Sam said. Dean studied him for a second and then shrugged and took a swig himself.

“Give me that,” I said. Dean hesitated for only a second before he held the flask up over his shoulder without looking away from Sam. I took it and swallowed a mouthful as Dean said, “OK, come on, up, we’re not talking about this out here.” He helped Sam up—more because it made him feel better than because Sam seemed to need the assistance—and we retreated into the crypt. I swung the door closed as Dean situated Sam on one of the stone benches and sat beside him.

“Right,” Dean said. “What’d you see?”

“It just…appeared before me. And this feeling washed over me, like…like, peace. Like grace.”

It made no sense at all. No angel but Lucifer should have been able to talk to Sam without harming him—even Michael was out of the question, bloodline or no, because of Azazel’s meddling. And Lucifer would not have been calling down revenge on random criminals, even if he’d been able to communicate with Sam in the first place. And if it had been Lucifer, Dean and I wouldn’t have been able to stand it. Or at least I wouldn’t have; Jimmy’s body was not intended to withstand the archangels. Dean might have had better luck.

Dean rolled his eyes. “OK, Ecstasy Boy, we’ll get you some glowsticks and a nice Doctor Seuss hat, whaddya say?”

“Dean, I’m serious. It spoke to me. It knew who I was.”

“And it told you to kill someone,” I said. They both startled a little and looked up at me as if they’d forgotten I was there.

“Yes,” Sam said. He sounded defensive.

“You’re supposed to wait for the divine bat signal,” Dean said, “so did you ask what this alleged bad guy did?”

“Of course I did,” Sam said. “It told me. He hasn’t done anything—yet.”

“Oh, this is just great,” Dean said, and got to his feet. “I don’t believe this crap.”

“The angel hasn’t been wrong so far,” Sam insisted. “Somebody’s going to do something awful, Dean, and I can stop it!”

“Damnit, Sam,” Dean began.

“This would hardly be the first time a spirit could read minds, intentions,” I said, trying to cover how unnerved I was.

Sam started to snap, caught himself, and took a moment before he said evenly, “I do not understand why you won’t even consider the possibility that we are hunting an angel here, and maybe we should _stop_.”

“You can’t honestly think it’s God’s will that you murder a human being in cold blood,” I said.

“Who says I have to murder him?” Sam demanded.

“What else are you going to do?” I asked. “If it’s someone that terrible, he won’t stop just because he’s thwarted once, and you can’t exactly get someone arrested on your report of an angel’s say-so.”

“Cas,” Sam said hotly, “You expect us to take _your_ say-so at face value, and I’m—”

“OK!” Dean said, loud enough to override his brother. He stopped pacing and turned. “You know what? I get it. You’ve got faith, and that’s great. I’m sure it makes things easier.” He dropped back onto the bench. “You know who else had faith like that? Mom.” Sam let out a breath, and Dean smiled tightly. “She used to tell me when she was tucking me in that angels were watching over us. In fact it was the last thing she ever said to me.”

“You never told me that,” Sam said, in the quiet tone of voice he usually used for speaking of the mother he didn’t remember.

“Yeah, well, what’s to tell?” Dean said, sounding tired. “She was wrong. There was nothing protecting her. There’s no higher power, there’s no God.” I shifted, but fortunately neither of them noticed. “There’s just chaos, and violence, and…and random unpredictable evil that comes out of nowhere and rips you to shreds. You want me to believe in this stuff, I’m gonna need some hard proof. So you got any?” He waited. Sam just looked at him. “Yeah. Well I do. Proof that we’re dealing with a spirit.”

* * *

We had to go shopping for some of the supplies; the trip was uneventful until the moment Sam stopped dead on the sidewalk, staring across the street at a young man. “That’s it,” Sam said, urgently.

“That’s what?” Dean said, peering in the same direction. The man looked completely normal to me, standing on the corner with a bouquet of flowers sticking out of his grocery bag. He was, at the very least, not possessed.

“That’s the sign,” Sam said. “Right there, right behind that guy. That’s _him_. Dean, we have to stop him!” Sam started to move but Dean grabbed him. “What are you doing, let me go.”

“No. No, if you’re sure that’s your guy, fine, but I will keep an eye on him,” Dean said grimly. “You are gonna go do the séance, I am not letting you get a murder rap for a goddamn spirit.” I moved to break the line of sight from Sam to his target, in case the man looked our way. Fortunately he seemed to be oblivious, putting his bag into his car without so much as a glance around.

“Dean—”

“Sam, he’s leaving,” Dean said. “Séance. I’ll make sure he doesn’t hurt anybody.”

Sam wavered as the young man got into his car, and then closed his eyes for a second and nodded. “Good,” Dean said. “Cas, go with him.”

“Dean,” I began to protest, but he spoke over me.

“I must've lived through this the first time,” he said. “We don't have time to argue.”

That assumed that this had happened the first time, and if it had, why had Dean never mentioned it to me? He'd have loved it, I was sure, shoving it in my face that angels had never helped him. “Fine,” I said, “Just don't get killed.”

“Oh ye of little faith,” Dean said with a twisted grin, and dashed for the Impala.

* * *

The church was still open, a few tired people quietly in the pews, when Sam and I walked in. No one seemed to take any notice of us. As we walked down the hall towards the crypt, I said, “I can do it.”

Sam sighed. “I’m not going to cheat, Cas, OK? I’ll do it right.”

“I didn’t think you were,” I said. “I just thought you might rather not.”

“No,” Sam said. “Can you watch the door? If someone walks in on this it might be…”

“Awkward?”

“I was gonna say bad, but yeah.”

I swung the door shut and leaned on it as Sam took out his supplies. He arranged the candles and lit them, then picked up his father’s book and read the Latin carefully. As he dropped the last ingredient onto the central candle, making it flare like fireworks, the door shuddered against my back as someone shoved at it.

“What’s going on in there?” Father Reynolds asked. Sam looked over his shoulder at me and grimaced. I bit my lip.

“Open the door,” the priest ordered. Sam shrugged and did not protest when I took my weight off the panel so that Reynolds could push it open. He stepped through and took in the scene. “What are you doing?” He looked from me to Sam and back. “What is this?”

“It won’t do anything,” Sam said. “It’s a séance.”

“A séance? Young man, you are in the House of God,” Reynolds said.

“Just give it a second,” I said. Sam gave me a wounded look.

“I most certainly will not. You are both coming with…”

That was as far as he got before the light began to grow. It was pure white and beautiful, I had to give it that; beautiful enough that I felt my eyes start to prickle with tears.

But it was not Grace, and I had not expected the stab of disappointment. I had _known_ it couldn’t be an angel—for that matter, it would have been very, very bad for me if it was and we’d still summoned it somehow.

“My God,” Reynolds said into the sudden silence. “Is that…is that an angel?”

Quietly, Sam replied, “No. It’s just Father Gregory.” The glow faded and coalesced into the man from the picture at the memorial. He wore his black suit, rather than robes or whatever else human might imagine an angel wears, and it made me feel sad for him; even as a spirit he was bound to his self-image.

“Thomas?” Father Reynolds said.

The spirit smiled gently. “I’ve come in answer to your prayers.”

Sam took a cautious step towards the spirit. Gregory said, “Sam, I thought I’d set you on your path. You should hurry.”

“You aren’t an angel,” I said.

“Of course I am,” Gregory said.

“No,” Sam said. “You’re a man, you’re a spirit. And now you need to rest.”

“I was a man,” Gregory said. He didn’t sound angry, or even disappointed. “But now I’m an angel.”

“This isn’t _It’s a Wonderful Life_ ,” I said. “You’re a spirit, Father.”

“You’re wrong,” the spirit said, still calm. “I was on the steps of the church. I felt the bullet pierce right through me, but there was no pain. And suddenly I could see…everything. Father Reynolds, I saw you, crying and praying. I came to help you.”

“Help me how?” Reynolds asked, his voice rough with grief. “By inciting innocent people to murder? Thomas, tell me that wasn’t you.”

“I received the Word of God,” Gregory insisted. “He spoke to me, told me to smite the wicked. I’m carrying out his will. Those _innocent_ people are being offered redemption. Some people need redemption. Don’t they, Sam.” Sam’s expression wavered, but he didn’t have to answer.

“How can you call this redemption?” Father Reynolds asked, a little stronger.

“You can’t understand it now, but the rules of man and the rules of God are two very different things.”

“You’re not—probably not wrong,” I said. “But what you’re missing is: _Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord._ ” Gregory frowned, just a little. “Thomas, this goes against everything you believe,” Father Reynolds said. “You’re lost. Misguided.”

“The people you sent, they’re locked up,” Sam said, pressing the advantage.

“No, they’re happy,” the spirit insisted. “They’ve found peace, beaten their demons. And I have given them the keys to Heaven.”

I itched to point out that angels couldn’t do that, but it seemed like it would undermine the point. Father Reynolds said, “You are not an angel, Thomas. Men cannot be angels.”

“But…I don’t understand. You _prayed_ for me to come.”

“I prayed for God’s help, not this,” Reynolds said. “What you’re doing is not God’s will. _Thou shalt not kill,_ Thomas. That’s the word of God.”

It was a fairly poor translation, really, but I was not going to be the one to break the flow.

“Let us help you,” Sam said.

Gregory shook his head. He looked frightened and confused, and I felt sorry for him. “No,” he said.

“It’s time to rest, Thomas. Be at peace. Let me give you Last Rites.”

The moment drew out. I held my breath. Finally, Gregory nodded. I couldn’t read him well enough to know if he was willing to accept that he was a spirit, or if he intended to go through with it as Sam had the séance, believing that it simply wouldn’t work.

“Oh Holy Host,” Father Reynolds said. His voice firmed as he continued, “I call upon thee as a servant of Christ to sanctify our actions this day, in fulfillment of the Will of God.”

Gregory flicked where he stood like a bad image on a television, and Reynolds paused to regroup as the spirit looked down at himself in confusion. “Father?” he asked. Reynolds dredged a shaky smile out of somewhere. “Rest,” he said, and after another long moment Gregory knelt. Father Reynolds went on, “I call upon Raphael, Master of the Air, to make open the way. Let the fire of the Holy Spirit now descend, that this being might be awakened to the world beyond.” The glow built again, wrapping itself around Gregory, bright enough that I closed my eyes; when I opened them, he was gone.

Father Reynolds turned to the bench next to the door and dropped onto it, clasping his hands and leaning his forehead into them. His lips moved in silent prayer. Sam just stood and watched him.

I snuffed the candles.

* * *

Sam didn’t turn when Dean unlocked the motel room door. I was staring at a page of my book, failing to make myself concentrate enough to read. Dean took in the scene and said heavily, “How was your day?”

“You were right,” Sam said to the bag he was packing. I put my bookmark back in place and stood. “It wasn’t an angel. It was Gregory.”

“I’ll be outside,” I said. Dean glanced at me and nodded. Sam kept staring at his hands.

There was no convenient place to sit, so I leaned on the Impala’s trunk and tipped my head back to look at the sky. It was a clear night, but in the parking lot there was too much light to see the stars. Some minutes later the room door opened and closed behind me, and I heard Dean’s familiar tread cross the short stretch of pavement. He leaned next to me.

“The spirit was right, he was a bad guy,” Dean said conversationally. “Sam needs a few minutes to deal, but I’ll tell you what, man, so do I.”

“What happened?”

Dean leaned back in his turn. “Pipe or something, came off of a truck. It bounced once and went through his windshield.” He paused and blew out a breath. “Went right through him, and the car seat too. It was sticking out maybe a foot, Cas. You know how much force that must’ve taken? It wasn’t heavy enough. Not enough momentum on its own. So I gotta wonder.”

“Father Gregory wasn’t an angel,” I said. I sounded more solemn than I meant to.

“Of course not,” Dean said. “But still. If that wasn’t the will of God, I don’t know what is.” I glanced at him, but he was still staring up at the invisible stars.

* * *

“Springfield, Ohio. The university,” I said. Sam nodded. “I remember this. This is the Trickster.”

Sam twisted in his seat so he could talk to me a little more easily. “You were along for this?”

“No, Dean told me about it.” ( _First time we met him he screwed with my baby, that was not long before all the crap with Azazel and Cold Oak. Second time he screwed with me—killed me like a hundred times, Sam said, but I don't remember it. Was a couple of months before the deal came due._ ) He'd made sure to emphasize, however, that they hadn't actually managed to kill the creature. “Tricksters are pagan gods. Coyote, Loki, Anansi, most cultures have one. The modern American version is Bugs Bunny.”

“Bugs isn't a god,” Dean protested, glancing at me in the mirror.

“No, but he has many of the same properties. Foremost among them is that he only plays tricks on those who deserve it. A perfectly innocent person would have nothing to fear from the Trickster.”

Dean thought that over, but only for a second; it wasn’t the kind of question that would hold his interest for long. “So how do we kill it?”

Sam’s eyes met mine and we shared a moment of amusement. “Pretty easy,” I said. “Wooden stake. But he’s tricky.”

“Hence the name,” Dean said with a flash of a grin. Sam groaned in a way that implied the quip was shaky, but he didn’t expect much better of his brother’s sense of humor.

“As I understand it, the first time around you thought you’d killed him, but encountered him again later.” It occurred to me that my voice had fallen almost entirely back into what I’d sounded like when I was first on Earth—a little slower, a little lower, a lot more formal. I wasn’t sure if I cared. “He can make constructs that look and act real; it seems likely you actually staked one of those.”

“OK,” Sam said. “So we’ll keep an eye out for a bait-and-switch. Anything else?”

“Two things. One: apparently he knew you were after him from pretty early on, and played harmless tricks on you to set you at each other’s throats. And two…” I smiled. “He’ll have no idea who the hell I am.”

* * *

I ended up in a motel a few blocks from the one the brothers were in; its sole charm was its location right next to an Internet cafe that was accustomed to people coming in and setting up shop.

Sam wandered in after I was already there, his laptop under his arm, and bought the first of the endless cups of coffee that would be his rent for a table and network cable. I didn't look up from the computer I was already at, being enmeshed in trying to bend the machine to my will. I'm roughly familiar with how to use a computer; there was enough time between the beginning of my fall and the end of the Internet for that. But I'm not particularly good at it.

Fortunately, I was there mostly for show. Sam was doing the real research, and it didn't take long for him to come up with the first place to check: Crawford Hall. I finished my coffee and left.

The campus wasn't exactly deserted, but it was a weekend so there weren't students rushing back and forth. The building was quiet as I made my way to the fourth floor, where the dead professor's office was located.

The elevator doors slid open to reveal a long hallway lined with doors. Halfway down it, a man in a gray coverall swiped a mop back and forth. He glanced at me and froze, still bent over his work.

I had begun to smile in greeting, but I felt myself falter at his reaction and paused. After a second of mutual staring, the janitor shook his head and straightened up, a grin spreading over his face. “Wow, sorry,” he said genially. “You look just like my brother, caught me off guard for a second. Something I can help you with?”

“Oh. Uh, yes,” I said, scrabbling for my cover story. “You can point me at Professor Cox's office?”

“Suuure,” the janitor said, looking me up and down. “You, uh, know he kinda took a header, right?”

“Yeah, that's kind of why I'm here,” I said. I lowered my voice and glanced around as if there were any chance anyone had snuck up on us. “I'm doing a study of supposedly-haunted places, and I hear that this building has a ghost story that might involve the professor. I'd just like to take a look at his office.”

“Pretty sure I'm not supposed to let you do that,” the janitor said.

“Look, I just need a minute. You can watch me, make sure I don't even touch anything.” I paused. “I'll make it worth your while.”

The janitor sucked air through his teeth, his fingers tapping on the handle of his mop. I tried to look trustworthy. After a second he said, “Ah, screw it. Sure.” He leaned his mop against the wall and headed down the hall, gesturing me to follow him. “I mean, I don’t want to cast aspersions on a dead guy, but Mister Morality? He brought a lot of girls up here, if you know what I mean. Guy was getting more ass than a toilet seat.” He threw me a meaningful glance and I huffed a laugh because it seemed to be expected. We stopped in front of a door labeled _A. Cox_ and the janitor pulled out keys.

“So, did you see him jump?” I asked as he unlocked the door.

“Nah, I just saw him on his way up with his young lady. I told the cops about her but I guess they never found her.” The janitor swung the door open and stepped back to let me through, waving a hand. “He went out that window right there.”

I pulled Dean’s EMF reader from my pocket and turned it on. “What the heck’s that for?” the janitor asked.

“Guy who got it for me says it detects the energy signatures of ghosts,” I said, and shrugged. “Got me, but it might detect _something_. Anyway, the girl, you saw her come up here with him. Did you see her go back out?” I waved the EMF reader around but, as expected, it remained silent.

“Now that you mention it, no.”

“And did you know her at all?”

The janitor shrugged. “No, but like I said, not a big surprise. I’ve been pushing a mop here for six years, never saw him with the same one twice. Maybe there is a haunting. I mean, there’s the story about the girl who jumped off the building; that’s probably the one you heard.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. They say she was having an affair with a professor, he broke it off, and she jumped. From, get this, room six-six-nine. Which is bull because the place only has four floors, but you know kids, they never let reality get in the way of a good story.”

“Six-six-nine?” I said.

The janitor rolled his eyes. “Yeah, turn the nine upside down and you get six-six-six. Spooky, right?” He made a vague gesture. “Still, getting the wrong room doesn’t mean there wasn’t a jumper. Maybe she didn’t like it that the prof here was taking advantage of girls the way she got taken advantage of. Serve him right, too.”

He said the last few words with a seriousness I wouldn’t have expected, and I thought, _Gotcha._ I did my best to keep it off my face.

* * *

I went back to the Internet café and logged in to the email account Sam had created. _It’s the janitor in Crawford Hall, as I remembered,_ I wrote. _He tried to put me off with a story about a suicide in the building that could have created a haunting, but the reader didn’t pick up any EMF at all. He probably suspects I’m a hunter, but I imagine he’ll want to watch and see what else I find out before he moves against me. I’ll check for updates in the morning._ I saved the message as a draft and logged out of the account.

I spent some time and more cups of coffee doing desultory research that would look like I was investigating the spurious haunting if anyone peered over my shoulder. The campus did have suicides, but none of them involved a student leaping from Crawford Hall, at least not as far back as I checked.

After a while I ran out of obvious ways to pretend to look into it, and sat there for a while with my fingers on the keys and my latest drink cooling at my elbow until inspiration struck. I opened a new browser window and typed “supernatural carver edlund” into the search box.

The list of results surprised me; for a book series with such a small following, there certainly seemed to be a lot of fans. And it appeared that Chuck’s publisher had given up on production quality in exchange for speed— _Croatoan_ was due out in less than a week. I had very little idea of how long it normally took a book to go from author to shelves, but I assumed it was longer than two and a half months.

The series had an official website with summaries and excerpts from the books. I clicked on _Croatoan_ ’s with some trepidation. If Chuck had seen me and written me down, Heaven would know I was there—more importantly, they would know _who_ _I was_. The fact that I hadn’t yet awakened to find myself bodily back in Heaven implied that I wasn’t in the book, or at least that I wasn’t well-described, but either way I needed to know. ( _This is for your own good, Castiel. You know where disobedience leads. What kind of brother would I be if I let you continue on that path?_ And I screamed, and begged, and promised, _promised_ to be good, to _obey_ , and when they finally believed me I was so grateful I'd have wept if I could have.)

The summary mentioned only Sam and Dean, which was a relief. There were two snippets of text, one of which was set in the medical clinic where we'd holed up; it contained Sam, Dean, Dr. Lee, Pam, Duane (with no indication that he was possessed, which I found interesting) and Mark, but not me. I let a relieved sigh slip out as I moved around the site to look at the forums.

“I love those books,” a voice said from next to me. I turned my head, startled, to find that the young woman at the next computer was looking at my screen. She met my eyes and made a slightly embarrassed face. “I mean, I wasn't trying to pry, but I caught the cover images. They're kind of...distinctive.”

“If you mean horrible, then yes,” I said, but I smiled. She was really, really cute, smooth dark skin and her hair in hundreds of tiny braids, wearing an electric blue t-shirt with the white outlines of a pair of crows bracketing her torso. “But the books are compelling, even with the awful art.” The _Croatoan_ cover was particularly egregious, featuring two overly-muscled shirtless men I assumed were meant to be Sam and Dean facing off against a horde of half-rotted pseudo-croats.

“Well, I mean, there are some issues. I'm not crazy about how they treat women, for one thing.” She shrugged. “But you know. Spank bank, am I right?” She grinned at me.

“If you like that kind of thing,” I said, and returned the expression.

“Hah, I knew it! So, you a Sam girl or a Dean girl?”

“Dean,” I said promptly. “You?”

“Oh, give me Sammy any day. He's, what, six foot twenty? Which I like.”

“Hey, to each their own,” I said.

“I'm Malika,” she said, and held out a hand. I shook it. “Cas,” I replied.

“Nice to meet a guy with good taste in literature,” she said.

“Then why are you talking to me?”

Malika laughed and said, “Careful, you're gonna insult me. I read 'em too.”

“Sorry,” I said. “So can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

“Oh, _real_ ly? Well I would say yes, but I already have one to go." She lifted a disposable cup that smelled strongly of caramel. "You gonna be around for a few days?”

“Probably,” I said.

“Great. Seeya around, then, Cas.” She smiled again and stood, stretching, which gave me a great view since she was short enough that her collarbone was just about at my eye level. She swung a coat around her shoulders and hoisted a backpack and was gone. I watched until she was out the door.

It occurred to me that I should have been much more interested in flirting with her.

By then it was late enough that I just poked around Chuck's forum for a few more minutes before logging off and heading for my room with a handful of haunting-related printouts. I took a long shower—all my showers were long, now that I had access to hot water again—and didn't bother getting dressed again afterward. I wrapped myself in all the blankets and watched meaningless television until I fell asleep. I slept badly, with no one else in the room; I had managed to reaccustom myself to hearing Dean's breathing. My dreams were too incoherent to be disturbing, though, which I counted as a win. I woke reasonably rested and took a few minutes to shave before I left again.

When I got back to the cafe, there was a new draft email waiting for me in the shared account. _We've found another possible victim,_ Sam had written. _He's not hurt, but from his story it sounds like a classic alien abduction, complete with embarrassing medical experiments. Aliens are a little weird even for us, so we're assuming this is still the Trickster. We're going to go check out the place the guy says he was grabbed from today. In the meantime, we should probably risk an in-person meetup to make plans to take the Trickster down. There's directions at the bottom to a Denny's a couple of miles from campus; we'll meet you there at 3. Dean says to tell you to watch your back._

I smiled a little at the last line as I typed in an acknowledgment. That done, I was left with some time to kill, so I returned to the _Supernatural_ website. I thought it might be useful to look at speculation about the future direction of the series, or maybe Chuck himself wrote about where the books might be going.

Two hours later I had found my way into the wilds of something called “LiveJournal”. I clicked from page to page, unable to decide if I was vastly amused or deeply disturbed. For one thing, many of the fans of the book series appeared to be convinced that Dean and Sam were sleeping together; at first I thought it might be helpful to correct their misapprehension, but it soon became clear there were too many people holding the opinion for my efforts to make a dent. (Chuck asked me once if I was angry that the books I appeared in were never published. I told him it didn't matter to me; the gospels were the gospels, whether they were published or not. He'd given me a pained smile, passed me the bottle of whiskey, and gone back to his game of solitaire.)

What confused me was the number of stories I found that Chuck hadn't written. They contained hunts I'd never heard so much as an inkling of—many of which got the monsters _extremely_ wrong—plus a great deal of sex between the brothers that I was sure had never happened. Eventually it dawned on me that people were writing _their own_ stories about Sam and Dean.

I had to stop and think about that for a while.

I spent the early part of the afternoon on more of the smokescreen ghost hunt, trying to find more people who'd heard the story about the supposed suicide. I didn't find many before it was time to head for the rendezvous, but that hardly mattered.

I walked to the restaurant, musing on the phenomenon of “fan fiction” as I went. It struck me as bizarre in the extreme, and I wasn’t sure how much of that was because of who I used to be. Angels aren’t _creative_ , as a rule; fiction in itself is something they have a hard time understanding. It seems pointless to them to create stories about things that don't exist.

As for myself, though I hadn't had many opportunities to read fiction, Dean had liked to show me movies—at least, until he stopped liking anything. I enjoyed them, even before my fall was complete, but I'd never had the slightest urge to write anything myself. Regardless, it seemed strange to write stories about characters _someone else_ had created, though of course Chuck had not, technically, created Sam or Dean at all. But the readers didn't know that, and honestly the idea of writing fictional stories about _real_ people was even stranger.

I hadn't managed to wrap my mind around it by the time I got to the Denny's.

* * *

The lock on the side door was almost insultingly easy to pick. Crawford Hall didn’t seem ominous, only dark; there weren’t any croats lurking in these shadows. But there were noises, like someone trying to walk carefully. It seemed clear I was supposed to follow them, so I did, up a flight of broad, curving stairs to a lobby and through the double doors on the other side of it.

The steps in front of me led down between rows of seats to a small stage. On the stage was a large, round bed under a canopy. Throbbing music played and a ball, covered in bits of mirror, hung from the canopy.

The two girls on the bed weren’t wearing much at all.

As I walked down the steps they crawled towards me, smiling. “We’ve been waiting for you, Cas,” the brunette one said.

“I’m pretty sure you two aren’t real,” I said. They swung their legs over the edge of the bed to sit, and I watched in appreciation—they weren’t real, but that didn’t mean they weren’t worth looking at.

“Trust me, sugar, it’s gonna feel real.”

“Come on,” the blonde one purred. “Let us give you a massage.”

“Normally I’d take you up on that,” I said, and raised my voice to address the room more generally. “But I think you know I can’t.”

“They’re a peace offering,” the janitor’s voice said from behind me. I turned. He was sitting at the end of one of the rows I’d passed, his feet up on the seat in front of him. He gestured with the bright red candy in his hand and continued, “I know what you are. I’ve been around a while, run into your kind before.”

“You have no idea what I am,” I said easily, boosting myself up to sit on the edge of the stage.

“You’d be surprised, bucko,” the Trickster said.

“I guess it doesn’t matter. The important thing is that I can’t let you keep hurting people.”

“Oh, come on! Those people got what was coming to them. Hoisted on their own petards. But I like you, I do. So treat yourself, long as you want. Just make sure it’s long enough for me to move on to the next town.” He stood and sauntered down the steps as he spoke.

“I really can’t,” I said, and leaned back on my hands. My jacket fell open a bit with the movement. “Dead people. It’s kind of a thing.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” the Trickster said, sounding unexpectedly serious for a moment. “And you know that I can.”

“I can’t let you go.”

The Trickster sucked air through his teeth and said, “Too bad. Like I said, I like you. But Cas—you shouldn’t have come alone.”

“I’ll agree with you there,” Dean said from halfway down the steps. “Told him it was a stupid plan, but did he listen?”

The Trickster’s head jerked around. As soon as his attention was off of me, I jumped for him, pulling the stake out of my jacket as I went. I hit him off-balance and we tumbled to the floor together. I managed to stay on top the whole way down, ending up straddling him.

“I knew I liked you,” he said, as I settled the point of the stake in the middle of his back.

“Sorry,” I said sincerely, and threw my weight onto the stake. It made a sickening crunch as it penetrated; the Trickster choked, twitched, and went limp. The music cut off and the flecks of light from the mirror-ball vanished.

“That feel a little too easy to you?” Dean asked, offering me the hand not holding his stake. I took it and stood, turning to check the stage; there were no girls, no bed.

“Yeah,” I said.

Dean looked around the theater, suspicion clear in his posture. “I think we should stick around for a few more days, just to make sure,” he said.

“Good idea.” I looked back down at the floor and was just noticing that the Trickster's body was gone when something soft landed on me.

It didn't take long to identify it as a blanket—from the feel of it, the faux-velvet one that had been on the bed—but that didn't help me find the edge of the damned thing. I could hear Dean's surprised shout, and then a mechanical roar that sounded like a small engine.

I gave up on trying to claw my way to the edge of the blanket and drew my knife instead, stomping on the fabric near my feet to draw it taut enough to stab. The knife-point went through easily and I yanked, slicing about a foot down before my leverage failed. I sheathed the knife as quickly as I could and grabbed the sides of the tear. There was a thud and Dean grunted as if he'd hit something.

Damn it, where was Sam?

The fabric parted easily and I shoved my way through the rip to find Dean sprawled in one of the theater seats. Above him stood a man in a coverall and face-concealing mask, holding a small chainsaw as if he was about to bring it down like an axe. The Trickster stood on the stage, his arms crossed over his chest, grinning—and there was movement behind him that I was going to have to hope was Sam, because I didn't have time to deal with him; Dean didn't appear to be in any condition to dodge a blow. I lunged and hit the chainsaw man hard in the side; he was big enough that he didn't fall, but he staggered and his chainsaw fell out of line.

I drew back before he'd quite recovered his balance and kicked him in the side of the knee; he made a furious noise, but no words. I kicked him again.

“Cas, come on!” the Trickster said. “It doesn't have to be like this, we can—”

“No,” Sam said, “we can't.” And then there was that horrible noise again.

The chainsaw man vanished, just as silently as the other constructs had, but this time the Trickster didn't just tremble and die; I turned in time to see glowing golden tendrils crawling over his skin as Sam let him fall. He crumpled, the tendrils spreading and merging until his entire body was covered in light. It exploded out, bright enough that I winced and turned away for a second; when I looked back the Trickster's body was gone, replaced by a scorched mark on the wooden floor. I stared at it.

“Cas?” Dean said.

The mark was roundish, not flared out to either side of an empty vessel. I shook myself. “That was less easy,” I said, forcing my voice to stay even.

“It worked, though,” Dean said. “He was expecting one surprise, but two was too much for him.”

“You can't really expect a surprise, Dean,” Sam said.

“You know what I mean,” Dean said. “Now let's get the hell out of Dodge before someone finds us. Like the real janitor, maybe.”

As we climbed the steps I couldn't help looking back at the burn on the stage floor.

* * *

I was on my second beer and Dean his third when he said, into companionable silence, “So you and me.” I looked up from the patterns of condensation on my bottle.

“What about us?”

“We were...together. In the future.”

“In a manner of speaking,” I said slowly. “We weren't exclusive, if that's what you mean.” There had been a time when we were, in practice if not formally, but then Sam said yes.

“Oh,” Dean said. He picked at the label on his beer for a few seconds, and then I saw a decision in the set of his shoulders. “I can work with that.” He set the bottle down with the air of a man who, having made his choice, intends to act on it promptly, and shoved his chair back.

“Dean,” I said as he circled the table.

“Yeah?” he said, and grinned at me. “Sam's got his research bug up his ass, won't be back for hours. We might as well have a good time.” He wrapped his hand in the front of my shirt and pulled. I resisted out of sheer surprise, and Dean's grin faltered. “Cas—if you don't want to, just say the word. I can take no for an answer. But I thought—”

“No, it's not that,” I said, scrambling to my feet. Dear God was it not that. We were close enough that I could see his faint freckles, nose-to-nose in the old familiar way that had started because of my ignorance of human social norms and continued because I liked being close to Dean. “I just didn't think you wanted to.”

Dean raised a skeptical eyebrow and made a show of looking me up and down. “Dude, have you seen yourself? I think _Sam_ has the hots for you and that kid's straighter than Gene Simmons.” His grip on my shirt tightened again. “So. You good?”

“I am fantastic,” I murmured, and leaned in to kiss him.

He tasted like beer at first, so I ran my tongue over his until the taste wore away. Until I could taste _him_. It had been a long time since Dean let me kiss him, but this was just like I remembered. He hummed into my mouth as I slid my left hand into his hair, cradling the curve of his skull in my fingers.

I could have stayed just like that for hours, but Dean had other ideas; he let go of my shirt to wrap one arm around my back and the other around my hips, dragging us together. He was half-hard already and I felt my cock twitch in response. I could _smell_ him, gunpowder and gasoline and leather and Dean, just Dean, and suddenly I was hard and I moaned against his lips.

“You make pretty noises,” he said, his voice full of fond amusement. Some lingering thread of rationality kept me from replying _So you've always said_ ; instead I wormed my free hand between us to work at his belt buckle as well as I could. “Good idea,” he said, and took his arms away to shed his shirts. We had to stop kissing anyway to drag his tee over his head, so I stripped my shirt off as well. Dean took me by the upper arms and walked us the few steps to his bed; he sat and I frankly tried to crawl into his lap.

“Hang on, hang on, I gotta take my shoes off,” he protested, laughing when I huffed in disappointment. I backed off enough for him to bend and untie his boots, but as soon as he loosened them enough to toe them off I crowded back into his space, one hand under his chin so I could tilt his head back and kiss him again. He got his belt unbuckled and popped the button on his jeans, but before he could get any further I batted his hands away to pull the zipper down myself. He was hot and fully hard now under the thin cotton of his briefs, and I closed my hand around him. “Ah, Cas,” he said, sounding ever-so-slightly choked.

“Stand up for a second,” I said.

“What for?”

I smiled and mouthed along the line of his jaw. “I guess we can do this with your pants on,” I said into his ear. “But if you really want the up-against-the-wall feel, there's a wall right over there. So stand up and let me get these off you.” He didn't stand so much as lean on his hands to take his weight off his hips, but it was good enough and I slid his jeans and briefs down. He kicked them off and shoved up onto the bed.

For a second I just looked at him. It hit me all over again, looking at him naked, that this was not my Dean; he had scars in the wrong places and he was clearly better fed—not exactly soft around the middle, but his abs had less definition and I couldn't easily count his ribs. This was not a man who'd been living on canned peaches and beef jerky. But his eyes were lust-dark in just the same way.

I shoved my pants down, unable to remember when they'd gotten unfastened, and stepped out of them and my boxers on my way to crawling up next to him. He rolled onto his side and wrapped his hand around the back of my neck. “Gonna have to tell me what you like,” he said, and kissed me again.

“I'm easy,” I said. I caught his lower lip between my teeth and bit gently. Dean shuddered. “Talk to me, that's all.” After Sam said yes, Dean stopped talking—when we were having sex, but also just...in general. It was what I'd missed most about him. ( _Classy_ , and I laughed more in surprise than anything else, because when was the last time I heard Dean say anything that wasn't planning or strategy or explaining someone's failures? And when my Dean glared at me I tried to cover it with sarcasm— _I like past you—_ but I could almost remember what he was _supposed_ to be, and I could see him watching me remember.)

“You like it when I talk?” Dean asked, a little skeptical. I nodded, and he shrugged. “Good thing runnin' my mouth is one of my talents.”

“Your mouth is very talented,” I agreed. Dean groaned and said, “Dude. That line work on a lot of people?” But he was smiling, so I shrugged and said, “It's a new one, you'll have to let me know.”

“Tellya what, I'm easy too,” Dean said against my lips, with an air of confiding a great secret. He slipped his hand to my shoulder and pressed until I rolled onto my back, following me so he was pinning me down with his body. It was so familiar I shivered, and Dean's brow furrowed. “Something wrong?”

“No, nothing,” I said, though I wasn't sure it was entirely true. Regardless, I didn't want this to stop. “Just a chill.”

“Huh, well, I'll have to make sure you stay hot then,” Dean said, suggestion lacing his voice like a tree's roots twining through the earth. He sat up and I whined in disappointment at the loss of his heat, the feel of him against me. But he shuffled down the bed and rested one hand on my thigh, and I realized what he was doing just as he bent and closed his lips around my cock. ( _For fuck's sake, Cas, no one calls it a_ _penis_ _, OK? Not in bed_.)

Dean told me once that he'd never been taught how to give a blowjob—that he worked it out by applying what he liked to other people. Whether that was true or not, he was very good at it, and I have a pretty broad basis for comparison. And this was good, if a little generic, which puzzled me—in the very small part of my brain that was available for such pointless things as puzzlement—until I remembered that _this_ Dean had not spent two solid weeks of motel-room evenings systematically working out exactly what it took to make me fall apart. The thought that I might get to repeat that particular experience made me twist my hands into the blanket.

Even without that specialized knowledge, it didn't take him long. Dean, my Dean, hadn't done this in so long I couldn't remember the last time with certainty; not long before I broke my foot, and that was as specific as mortal memory got. It was probably less than ten minutes before I was panting his name, trying to come up with words to warn him. My Dean would have known, just from the way I was breathing; I was less sure of this one.

“Dean,” I gasped. “Dean, I…I, oh please—”

Dean made a satisfied noise and something about it was the last tiny push I needed. I tried to say something—I don't actually know what, and it didn't matter anyway because all I managed was a strangled shout as the orgasm tore through me. (I understand why people used to call it “the little death”. It _scared_ me, that first time, and Dean had been almost comically confused by my reaction—not that I'd been in any condition to appreciate the humor. But he'd rallied admirably, let me cling to him and shake until I calmed. And then he'd set about doing it again, to prove that it wasn't really going to kill me.)

I made my way hazily back to noticing the world again as Dean crawled up my body, stopping to nip along the line of my collarbone. I could feel his erection against my thigh, hot as blood. “Told you it was one of my talents,” he said in my ear, sounding thoroughly pleased with himself.

“Yeah, I actually knew that,” I said, forcing my voice not to shake. He froze for the briefest of moments, and I started to curse myself for a fool before he said, “I keep forgetting you know me better than I know you.” He moved back enough that he could look at me, and I tried not to visibly sigh in relief that he was smiling. “So I guess you already know what _I_ like, huh Cas?”

I dredged up a smile of my own and was encouraged by how genuine it felt. “Yeah,” I said. I ran my hand down his side, feeling the skin shiver under my touch, and wrapped my fingers around his cock. His breath hitched as I stroked up slowly. “I know exactly what you like. So the question is, what do you _want_?”

“God, you want me to make a decision here?” Dean said raggedly. “I don't care, Cas, just...oh yeah. Oh yeah. Oh fuck, Cas...”

“Is that what you want?” I murmured as my hand kept up its steady motion. “You can fuck me, Dean.” He twitched harder. “Or I can just keep doing this. Or I can suck you off, if that's what you want. Just tell me.” It wasn't, perhaps, fair of me, but this was a game Dean had liked to play, and by the time I was confident enough to reciprocate the rules had changed and there was no more talking, only fumbling with each other to get off as quickly as possible. There was always something else that needed to be done, and no time for slow, leisurely sex. “Come on, Dean, tell me what you want.”

“I _want_ to get off, Jesus,” Dean said, too languid to be as sharp as he wanted.

“Got that,” I said, not trying to hide my amusement.

“Fine,” Dean said. He had to pause to catch his breath before he repeated, “Fine, then you figure it out. Cas—”

I was tempted, but the way his eyes were half-lidded just undid me. So I pushed him in my turn, my right hand on the unmarked skin of his left shoulder, until I was hovering over him; I kissed down the line of his throat, over his collarbone, down to one nipple and bit it till he hissed. By then he seemed to have caught on where I was going with this, and one of his hands came to rest on the side of my neck as I worked my way down.

I settled myself between Dean's legs and slid my hand back down to the base of his cock; he groaned and hitched his hips and I smiled, but I had no urge at all to make him wait. It had been too long, for me at least, and it wouldn't have been polite.

Most of my post-angelic quirks are useful in combat. But if there's a combat use for being able to easily suppress the gag reflex, I have never discovered it. Dean, of course, didn't know about that particular party trick; he was entirely surprised when I took his cock into my mouth and kept taking it until my lips met the ring of my fingers. “ _Holy fuck_ ,” he squeezed past gritted teeth. I would have laughed, but I didn't have the concentration to spare for it.

I don’t actually know if any given man would think I’m good at giving blowjobs; I have a sample size of exactly one. About that one, however, I am an _expert_. I know every sensitive spot, the ones to avoid as well as the ones to concentrate on. I knew how Dean would writhe and moan if I trailed my fingers over the junction between his leg and his body, if I took him deep and swallowed around him. He tangled his hands in my hair, which made me shiver though he didn't try to hold me down; even towards the end, he mostly seemed to just like to have his hands on me.

Through the whole thing he kept up a steady stream of encouragement and praise—not very coherent, but gratifying all the same, even when the pulses of his hips lost their steady rhythm and the only words he seemed able to manage were _Oh fuck Cas yes_ , and only more so when he lost most of those too and panted _Cas_ over and over.

I think he tried to warn me before he came. I didn’t pull away.

Eventually he tugged on my hair, gently but with purpose, and I went with it until I was propped on one elbow with the other arm folded on his chest. Dean grinned at me.

“OK, you do know what I like,” he said. I rolled my eyes and slumped to the side.

“I think it would be in poor taste to say ‘I told you so’,” I replied.

Dean snorted and said, “We’re gonna have to take a shower before Sam gets back.”

I turned my head enough to catch his eyes and he shrugged. “No, it’s not that, I’m pretty sure he thinks we’ve been doin’ it for weeks. But you know, I have some class.” He paused and thought it over theatrically. “Besides. In the shower we don’t have to worry about cleanup, right?”

* * *

When Sam got back we were clean and fully clothed, but he stopped two steps inside the door anyway and looked back and forth between us with narrowed eyes. “I can go get pizza or something, if you need a little more alone time,” he said after a second. I smiled and looked down at my beer while Dean grinned.

“Think we're good for now, Sammy,” he said. “ _Real_ good, actually.”

“Didn't need to know that, Dean.”

“Yeah, yeah. Whatcha got?”

Sam hesitated for a pointed moment longer before putting his laptop bag down on the table. “Last year in late February, a guy on 41 in Nevada had to swerve to avoid hitting a woman who ran out into the road in front of him. He ran off the road—shaken up, but not hurt. When he got out, the woman said she and her husband had been in an accident too. She refused to leave without him, so the guy helped her look. They didn’t find anything before something knocked out the Good Samaritan, and when he came to there was no sign of the woman or her car. Only thing he found was an abandoned hunting cabin.”

“OK,” Dean said.

“This or something like it has happened twelve times in the past fifteen years, always on the same date, on the same stretch of road. Five of the accidents were fatal, but all the surviving witnesses describe the same woman.”

“Hah. Good job, Sammy, you found us a haunting!”

“I think I found two,” Sam said.

* * *

After that, it was pretty easy; this was one of the stories Dean had been happy to tell, at least until he stopped telling stories entirely, because it had nothing to do with Azazel. I didn’t remember the names of the people involved, but there were newspaper articles about the original accident and from there Sam extracted the names and found property records. We were, refreshingly, able to do the salt-and-burn of Jonah Greeley's bones in broad daylight, since the cabin he'd been buried near was well out of sight of any prying eyes.

That being done, we had several days to argue about the best way to approach Molly Macnamara, the other ghost. As I'd remembered from Dean's story, her body had been cremated. Finally we decided to go with the plan Dean and Sam had had the first time around, that being offering to take her to the police to get a hunt for her husband underway. Without Greeley's interference, she could leave her stretch of highway easily.

Thus it was that the night of February 22nd found us driving along Route 41. The weather had been both warm and dry enough that there were no patches of ice on the pavement, but Dean drove slower than he otherwise might have to lower the risk of missing Molly. We were on our fifth pass along the critical stretch, and all of us were beginning to worry, when the radio crackled into static and suddenly there she was, standing in the glare of the headlights and holding her hands out defensively. Dean stopped just fast enough to avoid hitting her—not that it would have mattered, but we didn't want to disrupt her illusion just yet.

“Stop, stop!” she yelled. “You've got to help me!” She ran to the passenger side and made to pound on the window, but Sam rolled it down. “Please!”

“All right,” Sam said, and opened the door. “All right, calm down. Are you OK?”

“No,” Molly said, sounding utterly miserable. “We were, we were driving along and there was a man, crossing the road, I didn't even see him until it was too late! I swerved, and we crashed, and when I came to the car was wrecked and my husband was missing. Please, you've got to help me find him.”

“OK, all right,” Sam repeated. “We can—”

Dean got out of the car and leaned on the roof. “Sam, we're not equipped for this kind of thing.” Molly was far too upset to notice the lie. “Ma'am, maybe we can take you into town? It's only half an hour. You can tell the cops, they can get some guys up here with flashlights and stuff. Dogs, maybe.” David Macnamara no longer lived in the house he and Molly had shared, but he hadn't moved far.

Molly bit her lip and Sam said, “He's right. You won't do your husband any good if you freeze out here. We can get help.”

Even from my position still in the back seat I could see her wavering. “They can look for the man who caused the crash, too,” Sam said persuasively. “Make sure he's OK.”

“OK,” Molly said finally. “But we have to hurry, David could be in real trouble.”

Sam opened the back door for her and introduced us all as she got in. She gave her name and her husband's, and volunteered that it was their anniversary. We all made suitably sympathetic noises and then let the conversation lapse.

Molly didn't appear to notice that she wasn't actually chilly, which didn't surprise me; spirits can be remarkably narrow-sighted about anything that doesn't fit their worldview. I wasn't sure if she was convinced enough of her own reality to be solid to the touch, so I made sure not to bump into her...or the space she appeared to occupy.

Dean drove with his usual panache now that we had Molly in the car, and it didn't take long before we were approaching the outskirts of the town. As we passed a shopping center I saw Molly's forehead furrow in puzzlement. “When did they put that in?” she asked.

“Dunno, we're not from around here,” Dean said.

“Neither are David and I. We only moved in six months ago,” she said. “We shouldn't even have been coming along here, we were lost. Oh God, David.” She put a hand over her eyes. I saw Sam and Dean exchange a glance.

“I'm sure he's fine,” I said. If she'd been anyone else, I would have patted her comfortingly, but that seemed like a bad idea.

“He is fine,” Dean said. Molly sat up straighter and uncovered her face, looking even more confused by the certainty in his voice.

“Wait, what? How do you know?”

We were only a few minutes away from David's home now. Sam said, “Molly...it wasn't a coincidence that we found you tonight.”

Her eyes widened, then went to suspicious slits. “What are you talking about?”

“Look, what's the date?”

“The 22nd. February 22nd,” she said, bewildered.

“1992?” Sam prompted.

“Yes.”

Sam pulled out his cell phone and flipped it open, holding it up for her inspection.

“What's—is that a mobile phone?” Molly asked. She leaned forward to get a better look, and the little screen wavered.

“Molly, it's 2007,” Dean said calmly.

“What? No!” Molly said. “No, it's our fifth anniversary.” Her face hardened from confusion into anger and she demanded, “Stop the car.”

“We're almost there,” Dean said.

“No we're not!” she snapped. “This doesn't look right.”

“That's because it's been fifteen years since you saw it,” Sam said.

“Oh God, you're crazy. You're all crazy. Stop the car _right now_.”

“Molly,” I said, and she turned to face me. “Can you just trust us for another minute? It'll all make sense, OK? I promise.”

“It _has not been fifteen years!_ ” she yelled. The screen of Sam's cell phone fuzzed out for a second and she stared at it. Very quietly, she said, “What just happened?”

“You're angry,” Sam said. “You affected it.”

“But I—what? How?”

“Save the long explanations, we're here,” Dean said, pulling the Impala over to the curb.

“I don't understand,” Molly wailed. I didn't blame her.

“You will,” Sam said. “Come on.” He got out and opened the door for her when she showed no sign of doing it herself. Dean and I got out as well. I leaned against the car while Dean went to join Sam and Molly.The house was lit, the people inside still awake. Molly approached the window, looking through the open curtains at David. He was sitting on the couch with a mug of something in his hand, with a woman leaning into his side in a way that spoke of long familiarity.

“That's not....it can't be,” Molly said. “What's happening? Who _is_ that?”

“That's David's wife,” Sam said gently. “I'm sorry, Molly. Fifteen years ago, you and your husband hit a man named Jonah Greeley with your car. Of the three of you...David survived.”

“No, this isn't right. This can't be right.”

“Then explain why David looks fifteen years older than the last time you saw him,” Dean said.

“It's not possible,” Molly said, but she didn't sound as sure. I was certain she could feel it, that something was wrong; it was just a matter of getting her to acknowledge it.

“You've been haunting that stretch of 41 for the past fifteen years, one night a year,” Sam said. “You just don't remember. I'm sorry.”

“Oh God, I killed him,” Molly moaned. “I killed us both.”

“It was an accident, but yeah,” Dean said. She shut her eyes.

“Greeley moved on,” Sam said gently. “You should too. You have to let go.”

Molly sank down where she stood. “Why didn't you tell me when you first saw me? Why bring me here?”

“Would you have believed us without some kind of proof?” Dean asked. “You needed to see...” He trailed off and waved a hand at the house; Molly turned to look and muttered, “David.” She started to her feet and Sam moved to stop her and then remembered.

“Molly, we brought you here so you could move on.”

“But I have to tell him,” she said.

“Tell him what? That you love him? That you're sorry? He already knows that.” Sam paused, and sighed. “Look, if you really want to go in there, we're not going to stop you.”

“But?” she said.

“But you're gonna freak him right out. For life,” Dean said. He sounded frank, though not unsympathetic. “You're a ghost.”

Sam gave his brother a slightly exasperated look, which Molly didn't notice; she was too busy staring at the house with an expression of longing that I could sympathize with. “David's already said his goodbyes, Molly. Now it's your turn.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“Just let go,” Sam said. “Of David, of everything. Do that, and you'll move on.”

“Move on to what?”

“We don't know,” Sam said, with an air of admitting something. Her whole body wavered for a second, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Dean tense up.

“Heaven,” I said. All three of them turned to me, and I shrugged. “I know, it sounds cheesy, but really...Heaven. Everyone worries, I guess, but you have to be a pretty terrible person to go to Hell when you die.” Or you have to have made a deal, but if that were an issue the hounds would have taken her already.

“How do you know?” Molly asked, her voice unsteady.

“It would take too long to explain,” I said, pushing off the car to walk over to her. “But I promise you, Molly. Spirits are held here by unfinished business. Yours is finished now. Let go. You don't belong here anymore. You've been suffering the consequences of one mistake for fifteen years, and that's enough.”

She swallowed. “You promise?”

“Yes,” I said. It wasn't hard to sound sincere. I didn't know her, but it seemed unlikely that she could have been the kind of human monster whose soul would already be black enough for Hell. She studied my face, searching, and she must have been satisfied with what she found because after a moment she nodded and closed her eyes.

It wasn't really light, but it _felt_ like light as she dissolved into the night air. Dean and Sam and I watched the place for several seconds, until Dean shook himself and said, “I guess she wasn't so bad, for a ghost.” He rocked up on his toes and then back, and glanced at me. “Nice save, there. I think we were losing her, but you sold it.”

“It's true,” I said, trying to sound offhand. Sam's eyebrows were raised, but he didn't say anything as we got back in the car.

* * *

It was Dean’s turn to fetch dinner. As soon as the sound of the engine faded, Sam said, “From the way you were talking back in Providence, you didn’t strike me as the believing type.”

I looked up from my book. Sam was studying me like I was a new and interesting puzzle, his laptop open but shoved to the side. I marked my place and set the book beside me. “I said it wasn’t an angel,” I said carefully. “And it wasn’t.”

“You said it wasn’t an angel like it was preposterous that angels even existed,” Sam said. His fingers tapped slowly on the tabletop, the kind of restless movement that signified thought rather than irritation. “But you told Molly Heaven exists like you’d been there.”

“Heaven doesn’t have to imply angels,” I said, trying to keep my expression appropriate for a mildly entertaining philosophical debate; Sam made a face at me. Which was fair. “OK, yes, the concepts go together.”

“Do you believe in God?” Sam asked bluntly.

“Yes,” I said. At first I thought to qualify the answer, but I had never met my Father; I had had to take the archangels’ word for it just like everyone else. I was stuck with mere belief just as much as any other human.

“Do you pray?”

“No.” I had gotten out of the habit, once the other angels left and it became clear to me that God wasn’t going to save us. I had no reason to think He would respond any better this time around. “I…had a crisis of faith, you could say. I believe in God, but I don’t think He gives a damn what happens to us.” If He had, wouldn’t He have stopped it?

Sam nodded, considering for a moment. He asked, “Do you believe in angels?”

“Yes,” I said, somehow caught completely by surprise. Sam nodded again.

After a minute he pulled his laptop back around. I picked up my book again and tried to pay attention to the trials of Bilbo Baggins.

* * *

After that Dean declared a desire for warmer weather and Sam found us an odd little haunting on a movie set in Los Angeles. It turned out the ghosts were being controlled by a writer with a grudge against the production company; he thought his original script had been ruined by outside interference.

For all that he had done some very impressive research, he’d missed a crucial point: never destroy the artifact you’re using to control summoned creatures. It only frees them—and no one likes being controlled. The best that could be said for his death was that it was quick.

* * *

“I don’t like this plan,” I said. Again.

“Yeah, Cas, we got that the first ten times you said it,” Dean said.

“I’m with him,” Sam said.

“And yet we’re doing it anyway,” Dean replied cheerfully, ducking out of the circle of his necklace.

“Yeah, why is that?” Sam grumbled.

“Because I'm the oldest, and I said so.”

“I’m older than you are,” I said dryly.

“Older than him, prettier than you, Cas,” Dean said, and turned to wiggle his eyebrows at me blatantly. “And that is sayin’ something.” He slid his ring off as Sam made the face that meant he was trying not to think about his brother having sex.

“I don't think being the prettiest means you're in charge,” Sam said.

“Sam,” Dean said with a sigh. “We're committed, OK? Deacon needs help.”

“This is going to prison. On purpose.”

“Yeah, well, I'd take Cas with me so we could be cellmates but he's not one of the ten most wanted.” Sam made the face again, but after a second he sighed and nodded.

“OK, you know where to meet us?” Dean asked me as he wrapped his amulet and ring in a bandana and tucked the packet into a corner of the trunk. 

“Yes. Dean, this is a bad idea.” 

“It's what we got.” Dean picked up his flashlight and tossed the other to Sam. “You remember to swap out your good lockpicks?”

“Yes,” Sam said tightly. “Let's just...get this over with.” 

“Deacon will call you when it's time,” Dean told me, slamming the trunk closed. “Seeya.”

“Good luck,” I said. The two of them walked down the alley we were parked in and turned the corner in the direction of the Museum of Anthropology.

I waited. The seconds crawled over me, interminable.

Thirty-three minutes later, the first police car drove past the alley and I sighed. There wasn't any backing out now. I got into the car, pulling Dean's keys from my pocket. 

The seat felt weirdly familiar. It was the first time I'd been behind the Impala's wheel since that last drive from picking up Chuck on the way to camp. I'd driven other vehicles since, out of our motley fleet of scavenged trucks and SUVs, but Dean had taught me to drive in the Impala.

I put in a tape so that I could pretend the nervous tapping of my fingers was matching the beat of the music, and worried. This hunt _must_ have happened the first time around; there was no way I'd changed things enough for John Winchester's former comrade-in-arms to have been affected. And I did vaguely remember being told about a haunting that took them to a prison, but I'd had the idea that it had been an _abandoned_ prison, not one that was still in use, and I didn't remember anything like a coherent narrative. Those bits I did recall were even hazier than usual for mortal memories; far too much experience told me that I had heard the story while I was drunk, or more likely high. When I first discovered that intoxicants had begun to affect me, I spent as much of our downtime as I could arrange for stoned. 

Still, they'd gotten through it the first time, so obviously they'd be fine this time as well. They were together, and their father's friend was there to watch over them. It just bothered me.

Watching over Dean was _my_ job. 

I made a sour face at myself as I pulled into the parking lot of the motel. It wasn't as if I'd always acquitted myself perfectly on that particular task. I had been the one to convince Dean to take up the knife again with Alastair; I had let him be taken by Zachariah's angels and crippled my Grace getting him out again. I hadn't been enough after his brother said yes. And now I was human, only human, and this Dean still had Sam to rely on; what did he need me for?

“Fuck,” I said aloud, and put the Impala into park.

Come to think of it, there was at least fucking, right? Sam really, really couldn't provide that.

I sat in the car for most of an hour, until I was chilly and stiff.

* * *

I spent the next three days doing, essentially, nothing. We had stocked up on food before Sam and Dean left, so I didn't have to go out to eat if I didn't feel like it—which I didn't. I slept as much as I could, but there's only so much sleep the human body will accept, and anyway my dreams were bad. Similarly I couldn't just stay in the shower, for all that I was still reveling in unlimited hot water. I played pointless games on Sam's computer, and spent time on Chuck's website amusing myself with people's wildly inaccurate predictions about where the books were heading. There was still no sign of me in any of the hints Chuck dropped during his infrequent visits, a fact which I found both immensely comforting and very confusing.

The third night I went out and found a veterinary clinic.

Not all of the drugs that vets use are suitable for humans, but there's quite a lot of overlap. We always checked for vets when we were on supply runs. In my future I could have gone to a hospital, but here human hospitals were still staffed around the clock; vets rarely were.

The clinic was dark when I picked its rear door, and quiet even after I slipped inside; if there were animals being kept for the night, they were asleep or couldn't hear me. The place had an alarm system, but fortunately the lock on the drugs cabinet was extremely simple and I was through it by the time the desk phone rang.

I picked out painkillers and amphetamines, some shelf-stable antibiotics to restock the first aid kit, and two of the four vials of morphine. I carefully didn't take all of anything—the clinic's patients weren't human, but that didn't mean they deserved to be in pain. I wiped down everything I'd touched and was back out in minutes, making sure the door locked behind me. If anyone was sent to investigate the alarm, I didn't see them.

Back in the room I refilled my bottles, put the remainder in the first aid kit, and pulled out the disposable syringe I had picked up at the vet's.

Morphine is warm. Almost warm enough to be painful, when it first goes in, but very shortly you don't care anymore. It had been a while since I'd had access to any, so even the small amount I'd drawn hit me like a punch. The next time I noticed the world in any detail, it was ten in the morning. I wasn't hungry—opiates will do that, a very handy side effect—but I knew I should eat so I made a sandwich and went through the motions of chewing and swallowing it. I drank a couple of glasses of water, checked Chuck's website again, and took more morphine. My fourth day in the motel room passed very pleasantly that way, and I didn't even have to worry about Dean showing up to tell me to get my ass in gear, Cas, we need another gun on the supply run. ( _Y_ _ou deliberately wait till I'm hung over for these things, don't you?_ I asked, slinging my bag into the truck, and Dean threw me a sideways glance that was answer enough.) 

I woke up at dawn on the fifth day with a dehydration headache but otherwise feeling fine and decided regretfully that I couldn't afford another day of indulgence. I wasn't really clear on how fast the investigation of the haunting would be moving, given the severe restraints they'd be working under, so I had to be ready to go meet them.

That day dragged. I finally went on a run, hoping to tire myself out, and ended up lightheaded because I'd forgotten to eat. Fortunately I had money with me, so I stopped for food on the way back. I was most of the way through my meal when my temporary phone rang. I nearly dropped it in my haste to get it open, but the voice that answered my greeting wasn't Dean.

“Is this Cas?” the woman asked. She sounded tense; I couldn't tell if it was excitement, fear, anger or something else entirely.

“Yes,” I confirmed cautiously. 

“First off, this is a disposable cell so I won't be reachable again once we hang up,” she said. “A...mutual friend asked me to call you. He told me he needs you to look up a nurse who used to work at Green River County Detention Center. Her name was Glockner, she died during a prison riot in 1976. You need to find out where she's buried.” 

It was just a ghost, then, but more importantly Dean and Sam were all right. “Thank you,” I said. “You can throw the disposable phone away.” 

“Wait!” she said before I could hang up. “You're their friend.”

“Yes.” I stood, piling the remnants of my food back onto the tray.

“They aren't what Henricksen thinks they are. They aren't killers.”

I thought that over for a moment, trying to place the name—an FBI agent? That seemed right. “I can't say they have never broken the law,” I said. “But they, he, did not hurt those women in Saint Louis. They aren't _murderers_.”

She was quiet for long enough that I wondered if she was going to speak again before she said, “I defended a woman once. Looked guilty as hell, but it was the same pattern—when she got to town, the dying stopped. She said there were things...things most people don't believe in. Should I—God, I don't even know. Stock up on silver bullets or something?”

I repressed a chuckle, because it was a fair question. “Silver isn't a bad idea. Salt, holy water, iron. A lot of the things people used to use to protect themselves.”

 “I don't know why I believe this,” she muttered, almost too quiet for the phone's speaker to pick it up.

 “Because you talked to them, and you can see they aren't guilty of the things Agent Henricksen accuses them of,” I said. I dumped the tray into the trash bin.

 She laughed, more out of nervousness than humor, and said, “Yeah, I guess so. Look, do you have the name?”

 “Glockner,” I said, “Died 1976.”

 “Yeah.” There was silence on the line for a long moment. “I'm going to help them if I can,” she said.

 "Thank you,” I said sincerely, and hung up.

* * *

Seven and a half hours later I sat in the Impala, watching as Dean and Sam jogged across the grass towards me. They were both wearing orange prison jumpsuits.

“Heya, Cas,” Dean said as he opened the driver’s door. “You get the message?”

“Green Valley Cemetery,” I said. “Even got the plot number.”

“Awesome,” Dean said. Sam climbed into the back seat. “But before we go digging I think I wanna get changed.”

Sam sighed. “I’m a little worried about this Henricksen guy,” he said. “I mean, I get what he thinks but it’s like he’s got a vendetta.”

“Oh mama, I’m in fear for my life from the long arm of the law,” Dean quoted. He turned the key and patted the dashboard as the Impala came to life. “Aw, baby, did you miss me?”

“The way you treat this car is creepy,” Sam said. “This is the FBI, Dean, we should think about keeping our heads down for a while.”

“No argument here, but right now we’ve got a ghost to gank.” Dean tapped his fingers on the wheel for a second. “OK, Cas, where to?”

* * *

I drifted in and out of consciousness, aware of little beyond an ache in my side to match my chest. After a while it occurred to me that I didn’t know where I was, and I probably ought to remedy that, so I dragged my eyes open.

 The room was large, and had an institutional feel to it: cheap linoleum, dirty walls, and the door I could see had a crash bar rather than a knob. My gun lay on the floor not far from me, as if I’d dropped it. It took me a moment to realize that the piles of dirty fabric were bodies, but once I did the scene snapped into coherence.

 I was back in the sanitarium. I was back in 2014. I would have laughed—started to laugh, but moving the muscles turned the pain in my side from aching to stabbing and I made myself stop. I wrapped my arm tight around the wound and closed my eyes again.

 It might have been hours later, or days, or minutes, when I heard the footsteps. I didn’t look; even a croat might notice that my eyes were moving, and I vastly preferred to finish bleeding out in peace rather than being eaten. That lasted until Dean said quietly, “Cas, look at me.”

 I wondered if I was imagining it, and laboriously opened my eyes to check. Dean looked terrible; the whole side of his face was purpling into a spectacular bruise that had his left eye swelled nearly shut and he was cradling one arm in the crook of the other, but he was alive, at least, and I smiled. “Sorry, oh Fearless Leader, but I think I'm out of time,” I said, as loudly as I could manage.

 “Not an option, Cas,” he said, almost gentle, a tone of voice I'd forgotten he knew. 

“It's all right,” I said, and it really was. “It was never going to work if you didn't have—oh, _fuck_ that hurts.”

“Can you walk if I help you?” 

I laughed at him until it hurt too much. He just crouched there, watching me steadily, and I said, “You're _serious_.”

“Do I look like I'm joking?” 

I stared at him for a few seconds. Dean never looked like he was joking any more. “OK,” I said. “Grab my gun, would you?” 

He nodded. 

The walk to the vehicles was slow and excruciating. I had to stop halfway down the stairs because I couldn't face taking another step. Dean let me lean on him with no comment, which was odd enough that I noticed it even through the fog of shock, and eventually I managed to make myself move again.

As we were stumbling out the gate, I blinked and for a second I could have sworn I was back inside, somewhere cavernous and much darker than the wan sunlight. I shook my head—a mistake, it made me dizzier—and Dean said, “What?” 

“Nothing,” I mumbled, unable to make the word clearer.

Dean said, “Just a few more feet, and then you can sit down. Think I'm driving.”

Dean had to prop me against the side of the Jeep to get the door open, and he surveyed the interior with a disapproving expression. “No good way for you to lie down,” he said. “We’ll strap you in so you can sleep.”

“That might not be a good idea,” I wheezed. He frowned some more.

“You need the rest.”

“I need a lot of things. You can’t get me any of them.” Dean made a face of reluctant agreement that stunned me. The past-Dean I’d been interacting with in…my dream, it must have been a dream…would have made that face, but this version? It was so wrong that I didn’t register Dean searching my pockets until he’d extracted my pill bottle.

He held it up and shook it. The empty bottle made no sound and he looked at me quizzically. I managed a shrug. “I finished up what I brought on the way here. The rest’s back in my cabin for Chuck.” 

Dean’s grip on the bottle tightened and for a second I thought he was going to shout at me, but then he sighed. “Shoulda known you figured it out.”

“Dean,” I said, and faltered. I hadn’t called him by his name in a long time. He looked away and I tried to grin. I was sure it looked hideous. “Even your plans aren’t usually _that_ reckless,” I said.

 “Insouciant,” he replied, mispronouncing the word. He just stood there for a second before saying, “OK. In the truck, we’ve gotta get on the road if we want to be back by dark.”

 Dean gave me a lone, lint-covered Tylenol he’d had in his pocket. It did precisely nothing to help, but I appreciated the gesture. I spent most of the trip in a daze of pain and exhaustion, livened up by two more of the flashes of _somewhere else_ I’d experienced at the gate. During the second one I realized that in the flashes I wasn’t hurt—at least not as badly, though I still felt drained—and it felt like my hands were tied over my head. It was disturbingly reminiscent of something, but I couldn’t work out what. I resolved to think about it later; assuming I didn't actually die, I'd have plenty of time for it.

 I couldn't rest properly, but Dean went out of his way to make the ride as smooth as it could be. He checked that I was still alive a few times, but otherwise he drove in silence, his lips thin and his eyes huge in his pale face. It was drawing close to dusk when I opened my eyes to find we were inside the gate, people gathering around. I assumed I had a few new scratches from checking for shapeshifting, but I hurt so much I couldn't detect them. Dean climbed out of the driver's seat and came around to my side, still not speaking. By the time he had my belt unbuckled, everyone who was left had shown up. They were all quiet too, taking their cue from him.

 “Do you want to hear this, or go to the infirmary?” Dean asked me quietly.

 I shrugged. “Make it quick.”

 He nodded, and drew a deep breath, and turned to face the solemn crowd.

 “Lucifer's dead,” he said, in a voice that wasn't loud but carried. A few people gasped and I saw Zoe at the back of the crowd put her hand over her mouth, but no one spoke. “Everyone else who went with us...we'll need to send people to bury them. Them and my brother.” He paused. It was so quiet I could hear the dead leaves being blown over the roof of the mess hall by the breeze. “I don't know if it's going to get better, but I hope it'll stop getting worse.” He stopped talking and I watched his shoulders slump a little.

“Dean,” Chuck said, taking a step forward. “Do you want a hand getting...getting Cas to the clinic?”

I could tell Dean had heard the edit too, but he didn't call Chuck on it.

* * *

I don't know how long I spent in the infirmary, but every time I broke the surface of consciousness Dean was there, sitting or sleeping on one of the cots or talking to someone, low-voiced. It couldn't have been too long, because his bruise hadn't healed much by the time I realized I'd been staring at the ceiling, reasonably alert, for at least ten minutes. I turned my head and there he was, sitting in one of the uncomfortable folding chairs with a battered paperback in one hand. His right arm was in a sling. 

“Tell me what happened,” I said quietly.

Dean's lips tightened and I expected him to snap, or just stand and walk out, but he didn't. Instead he put his book down on the floor, open in the way Chuck always scolded people for, and shifted until his good elbow was resting on his knee. “You guys went in,” he said. “I went around back. I knew he'd be out there. Dunno how I knew.” His lips twisted into an approximation of a smile; it had to hurt, with that kind of bruising. “He was wearing a white suit. Looked like a revival tent preacher, Cas, it was bad. None of you have any style.” I nodded to fill the space while he stopped to collect himself.

“I had the Colt in my jacket, and I shoulda just...but I was dumb. I said—I said his name.” He didn't mean _Lucifer_. “He turned around and said, 'Hello, Dean,' and for a second I just couldn't move, you know? But I guess he could read my face or something because he got this _look_ , like, _I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed_ , and he said 'I hope you didn't think you could get close enough to try anything,' and I said, 'I dunno, is this close enough?' because I knew I was only gonna get one shot, but I didn't even have time to pull out the gun, they're so fast, I forgot how fast they can be.” Dean stopped talking again and looked away from me. I could see the way his eyes were shining in the light of the Coleman lamp. “He was right in front of me before I could do anything. Got me a good one right across the face, and then he picked me up and threw me, actually threw me. I came down bad because I was still trying to draw on him, landed on my trick shoulder.” 

I missed the next few words to another flash. This one lasted a little longer, and seemed a little clearer; it was indoors, and the space was large and shadowed, maybe one of the derelict warehouses that supernatural creatures seemed to love to lair in. I could feel a hard wall at my back. That was all I got before my consciousness snapped back, to Dean watching me carefully. “If you're not up for this,” he started, but I shook my head.

“I'm all right. I just greyed out for a second.” Dean eyed me for a moment longer before shrugging.

“I was out of it from the throw, so I didn't get up before he got to me. He put his foot on my neck and said, 'I didn't want to have to do this, but you're very persistent.' And he smiled at me, fucker smiled at me, and it was so wrong, Cas, he couldn't even run Sam's face right, he looked like he was stoned or something. I think he was gonna break my neck.”

“But he didn't,” I said. I could picture it, the garden behind the asylum brown with neglect and autumn, Lucifer standing in the middle in his clean white suit, smiling down at his vessel's beloved brother. 

Dean leaned back in his chair and said, “No, he didn't, and you know why?” I shook my head.

“Because of me,” Dean said. “Me from five years ago. I sucker punched him to keep him out of it, but you know I always did have a hard head.” Astonishingly, he smiled. It was a very small thing and didn't last more than a second, but it was real. “He came running up and Lucifer turned to look at him and said, 'Oh. Hello, Dean,' again, just like he said it to me and while he was distracted I pulled the Colt and he turned back around to me and I said, I said, 'Sammy, I'm sorry,' and I...” He choked on the next word and a tear slid from his eye. I couldn't think of anything to say. It had been years since I'd seen Dean cry. “I don't know what happened after that,” he said. “I must've blacked out or something. When I woke up, young me was gone and Lucifer...well it was a bitch hauling his gigantic ass into the building but I knew I wasn't gonna be doing any grave-digging with my arm all jacked up. And then I came and found you.” 

He was still crying, slowly and quietly. He seemed to be ignoring it. I pushed myself closer to the wall and held out my hand in invitation. Held my breath. Dean stared at me in silence for a long time before he lurched to his feet. He took a step away, and I could have sobbed in frustration but I didn't dare make a sound.

“I killed my brother, Cas,” Dean said, his back to me, staring at the curtain that covered the doorway to the rest of the clinic.

“I'm so sorry, Dean,” I said. Dean stiffened, and for a second I thought I'd said the wrong thing.

But he turned and came over to my cot and sat on the edge of it. I was quiet while he unlaced his boots. We were both quiet, as he shrugged out of his jacket and swung his legs up onto the bed with me; it was a tight fit for two grown men but we'd managed worse, and we were careful with my side and his arm, and he turned and said, into the side of my neck, very softly, “I killed my brother.”

“I know,” I said, just as soft, and wrapped my arm around his shoulders, and let him cry.

* * *

In the morning Dean was gone. I spent the day not moving more than I could help; you don’t realize until it’s too late how many movements involve the muscles in your sides. I was idly attempting to put the events of my dream in order—it seemed like there should have been something after the Winchesters broke out of prison, but I could not for the life of me remember what it was—when someone pushed aside the curtain that turned my tiny alcove into a semi-private space.

“Cas!” Becky chirped. She had a tray balanced on one hip. 

* * *

I was sitting at the table when Dean came in; I hadn’t dared attempt the ladder to his bedroom. Breaking my neck would have made things extremely awkward.

“Cas?” he said. “What’re you doing out of bed?” Then he focused on the table in front of me. “And not that I’m objecting to people being armed, but what’re you planning to shoot in here?”

“That depends,” I said, as calmly as I could manage. He was so much like…like he used to be, like the Dean in my dream. Except it hadn't been a dream.

“OK,” Dean said slowly. He pulled out the chair at the other end and sat in it. “You’re not going out until you’re healed up, just so you know.”

“I wasn’t…Becky brought my dinner.” 

“OK,” he said again. “What, did she talk your ear off? She’s good for that.”

“She always was,” I agreed. “Until a year and a half ago.”

 Dean looked puzzled. It made me hurt, for all kinds of reasons. “I don’t remember her changing a year and a half ago.”

 “That was when the Black Dog got past the fence,” I prompted him.

 “That kind of thing happens, Cas,” Dean said.

 “Yeah. We lost some people that time, though.” Silence fell between us. “We lost Tasha, and Drew. And Becky. Chuck was broken up about it for…well, honestly, I think he still is. Or would be, if he were real.” I paused, but Dean said nothing, just watched me. “The djinn. It was a djinn, I remember now. We went into the factory while Sam was back at the room. The last thing I remember is seeing your back. It must’ve gotten behind us—knew the ground better than we did.” I realized I was babbling and made myself stop.

“We haven’t seen a djinn in years,” Dean said. “There was that time Sam and I went after one, but—”

“Please, just _drop it_ ,” I said tightly. “This isn’t…Dean, I can imagine all sorts of ways for you to react to killing Lucifer, but being able to casually say Sam’s name less than two days later isn’t one of them. I wished for this.”

“You wished to be living through the end of the world?” Dean asked. “Sucky wish.” 

“I wished for it to be _over_ ,” I snarled at him. I couldn’t manage standing, or I would have leaned on the table for emphasis. “I wished for people to stop dying for my mistake. I wished for you—” But this wasn’t really Dean and it wasn’t going to do any good to argue with a figment of my imagination, and I picked up my Beretta. Dean’s eyes widened in not-quite-enough alarm. 

“Cas, I think you’re a little out of it from whatever Terry has you on,” he said. “Why don’t you give me that and you can get some sleep, and we’ll talk about it in the morning.” He stood up and took a step towards me. I lifted the gun to my temple. Dean stopped short. 

“This isn’t real,” I said. 

“Of course it’s real,” Dean said, and shrugged. “It’s exactly as real as you want it to be, Cas.” 

It was an acknowledgement, and I shuddered. Dean smiled, but it wasn’t mocking; it was compassionate. “Stay,” he said, softly. “Stay with me, Cas.” 

“It _isn’t real_ ,” I insisted. 

“Why does that matter? You can stay, and have this. We’ll rebuild, we’ll heal the damage. You can belong here again.” He was inching towards me. 

I winced. Of course this Dean knew what I wanted. “The djinn will kill me.” 

“It’ll be years. You’ll go out a hero, we can make sure of that.”

“Dean,” I said, and it was very hard to keep my voice steady. “Do you love me?”

“’Course I love you, Cas,” he said, casually. He was almost close enough to grab the gun. 

“That’s what I thought,” I said, and pulled the trigger.

* * *

I struggled to open my eyes, thinking irritably that I was getting very tired of waking up in unknown but dangerous circumstances. My arms were tied over my head and my chest ached, though at least the wound I'd had in the dream was gone. At last I managed to get a look around. The space was only dimly lit, but my eyes had had plenty of time to adjust and when I rolled my head to the side I discovered I wasn't alone; there was a young woman next to me, tied up the same way. She had an IV needle in the side of her neck and she seemed to be crying in her sleep.

It took me half an hour and a fair bit of the skin on my wrists to work my hands free of the rope that bound them. Then there was the needle in my neck; pulling it out made me so dizzy I had to sit down to complete the job. I leaned against the wall for a few minutes, breathing hard until I could manage to get to my feet again. I staggered over to the girl.

She slumped against her ropes and whimpered when I withdrew her needle, but I had a feeling it was going to be a while before she even approached coherency; she was far too pale and I didn't think she'd have lasted much longer—no doubt why the djinn had taken me. My knife was still on me, though; either the djinn hadn't found it or it hadn't bothered to search. I sawed away at the ropes, having to stop frequently to rest and chase off dizziness. Eventually the ropes broke and I had to drop the knife to catch the girl as she collapsed.

As I was easing her to the floor, I heard a soft sound behind me. I got her down and turned just in time to meet the djinn's rush. Its outstretched hand and the markings on its face glowed blue; I had a flash of that hand coming around from behind me and smashing into my face, and shook it off just in time to catch the real hand and divert it from my skin. The djinn stumbled as I redirected its momentum, but recovered quickly.

The fight should have been short; djinn aren't much stronger than normal humans, and they don't tend to be good fighters, relying on their mind-bending powers for most of their defense. But I was shaky and sick, and my knife got kicked out of range early. I was reduced to trying to dodge its hands, and though we weren't in the factory I'd been taken from it still knew the ground better than I did; it backed me up over and over until I tripped over something and went down. I landed with a slam on my back and the djinn followed me, a little more gracefully. I grabbed for its wrists and got them, barely, which left me with the djinn hovering over me, using its weight to help its glowing hand bear down on my face.

I wondered distantly how long it would take for me to realize it was a dream the second time; if I'd have enough strength to try to break out once I woke up. And then, a breath before the hand would have touched my skin, the djinn made a choking noise and stiffened. The glow flickered and faded out as the djinn fell bonelessly against me. I rolled the body away, panting.

“Cas, are you OK?” Sam asked, kneeling. Behind him, Dean was scanning the rest of the room, a blood-covered knife in his hand.

“I've been better,” I said, and Sam laughed.

* * *

It didn't take as long as I might have expected to recover; a solid night's sleep and one long day of lying around, getting up only to go to the bathroom, cured most of the fatigue.  The djinn had only had me for about ten hours, as far as we could figure.  My fellow captive was a different story, though the hospital reported that she would probably pull through.

Dean informed me seriously that, as the one whose ass had to be pulled out of the fire, it was my job to fetch dinner; Sam rolled his eyes and protested that that wasn't really a rule.  Whether it was or not, I didn't mind, and ended up dispatched to a nearby diner, cash in my pocket and orders in mind.  The place wasn't terribly busy, so I once I'd ordered I took a stool at the counter to wait for our food.  I leaned my head on my folded hands and tried not to think about the djinn's dream.  It shouldn't have been that seductive; even assuming that the Apocalypse had been completely halted by Lucifer's death, that life would have been dangerous and difficult, no matter what the false Dean had said about rebuilding.

But that Dean had been  _my_ Dean, the one I'd lived and bled through five mortal years with.   And the real Dean was not him, and no matter how much time I spent here I would never have him back.  I drew a deep breath and tried not to sigh too loudly.

"I was going to tell you you're in my spot, but from the sound of it you need it more than I do," someone said.  I jerked in surprise and turned to find the next stool occupied by a middle-aged man, short but powerfully built, his dark hair going grey at the temples.  He raised one eyebrow at me.

"My apologies," I said.  "I can move, I'm just waiting--"

"Nah, it's fine," he said, waving a hand in dismissal.  "I like to pretend I'm a regular around here but it's not like I have a reservation or anything."  He continued to watch me, even when the waitress came over to take his order of a hot fudge sundae.  I began to wonder if I might be missing some social cue that should have been obvious--even now, that happened, especially when dealing with someone I didn't know well.

Finally, he said, "So not to sound like your shrink or anything, but you look like a man with something on his mind."

"In a manner of speaking," I said.

"Go on."

I sighed again, shorter this time, but there wasn't any reason not to, was there?  "I was...reminded recently of someone I used to know.  It's uncomfortable."

"Looks to me like there's more to it than that," he said.

"Isn't there always?"

"Point," he conceded easily, and held out his hand.  "Nunzio," he said.  "You can call me that, I don't use my first name."

"Cas," I replied.  We shook.

"Well, Cas, here's some free advice, worth exactly what you're paying for it: focus on what you've got and don't settle for dreams."

I blinked at him and he shrugged.  "What?  I thought it sounded profound."

I was saved from answering by the waitress, who piled my take-out boxes on the counter with a practiced flourish.  "It was nice to meet you," I said, extracting a tip from my money to give her.

"You too.  Hey, honey, can I get a slice of pie to go with my ice cream?"

I smiled and said, "I have a friend who's very fond of pie."

"Your friend clearly has good taste.  Look out for him...or her, I don't like to assume."

"I'm trying to," I said, and Nunzio glanced at me, a strange smile on his lips.  

"I can see that," he said, as the waitress set his sundae down.  


	3. Chapter 3

We were in West Virginia en route to Sioux Falls when Dean pulled in to a café parking lot. “Remember the extra onions this time,” he said brightly as Sam unfolded himself from the passenger seat.

Sam rolled his eyes. “Dude, Cas and I are gonna have to ride in the car with you and your extra onions.”

Dean grinned at him, unrepentant, and said, “And see if they have pie.” Sam flipped him off and swung the car door shut; Dean laughed. “He’s grumpy. Better check for pie anyway, I loves me some pie.”

“I will try to distract you from your disappointment if they don’t have any,” I said. Dean caught my eyes in the rearview mirror and I smiled.

A second later the radio, which was softly playing the local news station, frizzed out into static. Dean frowned down at it and leaned over to tap the cover. I was still sitting up and caught a flicker of movement in the corner of my eye.

I turned to look at the café; for a moment I didn’t realize what was wrong. And then it dawned on me.

“Dean,” I said. The tone of my voice brought his head up fast. The radio sputtered once more and died.

We were out of the car in seconds. Dean hit the café door at a half-run, and it was immediately obvious that things had already gone very wrong; there was a customer in one of the booths, face down in a puddle of blood on the table before him.

“Sam?” Dean said. He drew his gun.

I didn’t bother.

The waitress had dropped behind the counter; the cook in the back was crumpled in the angle of the refrigerator door. Dean went over to the back door and looked out, still calling Sam’s name; there was no answer. From where I stood in the kitchen entrance, I saw him rub his finger over the edge of the door, and when he turned his face was set.

“Sulfur,” he said. “They took him, didn’t they?”

I nodded, and Dean closed his eyes, just for a second. “We need to get to Bobby,” he said.

* * *

Bobby answered promptly, but calling the Roadhouse did no good, and Dean cursed for a solid thirty seconds before he snarled, “This is too early, Cas. You told us we had almost two weeks.”

“We should have,” I said. “Dean, you need to slow down. We don't have time to deal with getting pulled over.” He set his jaw but the speedometer began to creep down. “Something must have happened to tip Azazel off. I don't know what, but something.” It almost didn't matter; it could have been anything. The timeline doesn't like to be changed, and I should have remembered that the relative ease of saving people like Madison would have little to do with the bigger events. Sam's death was required to set the Apocalypse in motion.

Dean's hands flexed on the steering wheel. 

* * *

I knew how it had happened; I’d seen it in Dean’s dreams more than once. So when we caught sight of Sam, clutching his right arm to his chest as if it hurt, I felt a terrible sense of déjà vu. “Sam!” Dean called, and Sam sounded immensely relieved as he returned the hail. Even as he did, though, I caught movement behind him that resolved itself into a tall young man in an Army uniform. Jake Talley.

“ _Sam get down!”_ I shouted, over Dean’s “Look out!”, but Sam didn’t have enough time to react before Jake swung at him with something that glinted in his hand, driving it into Sam’s back hard. _No, no, no_ , I thought miserably, as Jake stepped back, taking the knife with him—not that it would have mattered if he’d left it, that wasn’t a wound that would benefit from the weapon being left to slow the bleeding—while Sam swayed to his knees, his head thrown back against the pain. I swung my shotgun to my shoulder and pulled the trigger, though I knew it was hopeless; I was much too far from Jake for the shot to do more than sting, if it hit him at all.

Still, Jake turned and ran, moving faster than he should have. Bobby went after him, muttering a stream of curses I didn’t pay any attention to. And Dean covered the scant feet to his brother and dropped to his knees in the mud, seizing Sam by the lapels of his jacket. “Sam!” he said. “Sam? Sam, hey, come here, let me look at you.” I stared at them mutely as Dean pulled Sam forward to lean on his chest as he touched a hand to the wound. Sam didn’t so much as twitch; he hadn’t felt it. Dean pulled his hand away again and studied the blood that stained it; too much blood, coming too fast, and I saw him close his eyes as he realized. 

But he pushed Sam back up, trying to help him hold his head straight, and said, “Hey, look at me, it’s not that bad. It’s not even that bad, all right?” Sam’s eyes drifted away and Dean snapped, “Sammy? Sam! Hey, listen to me, we’re gonna patch you up, OK? You’re gonna be good as new.” I didn’t know if Sam believed it, or for that matter understood what Dean was saying, but if I hadn’t known better I might have been convinced; Dean sounded utterly sincere.

“I got you,” Dean said, his hands on Sam’s neck now, holding him up. “I got you, I’m gonna take care of you. That’s my job, right? Watch out for my pain-in-the-ass little brother?” 

Sam tried to smile.

The expression slid from his face.

“Sam? Sam!” Dean said. “Sam. Sammy!” He paused for a long, awful second, staring into Sam’s slack face as if he’d be able to find a miracle there. “No,” Dean said. I turned away to give them as much privacy as I could as Dean let his brother’s body fall forward into him again, supporting the weight with his arms around its shoulders. “No no no no, Sam, no,” he muttered. I hunched my shoulders, swallowing panic.

Dean shouted his brother’s name one more time, and then was silent.

* * *

A few minutes later there was movement in the corner of my vision and I turned to see Bobby approaching. He caught my eye and shook his head, and then dismissed me from his attention entirely, going down on one knee next to where Dean was still cradling Sam’s body. I made no effort to overhear their low-voiced conversation, which ended with Bobby calling me over to help. We carried the limp weight up the sagging porch steps and into the rickety old house with reasonable ease, and discovered that there was a bare mattress on the ancient bedframe in a side room on the ground floor.

Dean dragged a chair from the main room and sat down in it, his face in his hands. Bobby and I withdrew quietly and went to fetch our bags. Once that was done we settled in to wait.

* * *

I managed to catch the occasional hour's sleep. Bobby did too. As far as either of us could tell, Dean didn’t. He refused food when we brought it, though I managed to get him to drink half a bottle of water once. Bobby and I sat in the main room and had increasingly anxious discussions that pretended to be about plans to short-circuit Azazel’s opening of the Devil’s Gate. Finally, a day and a half after Sam was stabbed, Bobby climbed to his feet and said, “We can’t wait any longer. I’m gonna go talk to him.”

I could have told Bobby he wasn’t going to get any result he liked, but it didn’t seem like my place to dissuade him; instead I wandered out onto the porch while he went to dash himself on the rocks of Dean’s grief. I could hear their voices, but no words until the very end, Dean snapping, “Go!” and then dropping his voice again. A few seconds later Bobby stepped out of the house, his bag over his shoulder. He stood next to me, both of us looking out over the cars and the empty countryside beyond.

“He ain’t listening to me,” he said. He was calm enough on the surface, but there was worry and grief of his own under it. “I dunno how long it’s gonna be before he snaps out of it.”

“Not anytime soon,” I said, hearing the bleak fear in my own voice. I thought Bobby could hear it too, from the way he glanced at me.

“Sam…” he said. His voice cracked. I pretended not to notice. “Sam had some info he put together. About you.”

I tilted my head in question.

“That scar you got. Sam gave me a sketch, said Dean said you told him it banished something, and when I went lookin’, eventually I found out what.” He paused. I waited. “These boys…where you come from, they really get mixed up with angels?”

“Yes,” I said.

Bobby mulled that over for a second and then said, “What’s _Cas_ short for, anyway?”

“Look under Thursday,” I said. “You’ll figure it out.” The fact that he was asking the question in the first place meant he had his suspicions already. Bobby turned to look at me and I glanced back. After a second he shook his head.

“You know I was a little iffy when you first showed up,” he said. I nodded. “But I think you care about them—about Dean especially. So I’m gonna go. Someone’s gotta deal with this gate. Dean knows where to find me when he’s ready, but right now he ain’t. You haven’t pissed him off, so you…you help him do what he needs to do, you got me?”

“I will,” I said. It felt like a vow.

Bobby sighed and nodded. “He loves that kid so much.”

“I know.”

“All right, then, I’m goin’.”

He didn’t offer to shake my hand, but it wasn’t really necessary; that he was leaving me with Dean was evidence enough that Bobby had decided I was worth having around. When the noise of his old station wagon had faded, I went back into the house.

Dean was still in the room where we’d laid Sam out. I’ve seen a few corpses that really did look as if they were sleeping; Sam's wasn’t one of them. Even on its back, so the wound wasn’t visible, it was obvious that this was a dead body. Dean was staring at his brother’s slack features, rubbing one hand over his lips as if he’d forgotten he was doing it.

“What did I screw up, Cas?” Dean asked when he heard me stop in the doorway.

“Nothing,” I said, trying to make my tone gentle. Not that it had ever helped with my Dean, but this one, so much less broken, might still respond to tone of voice.

“We knew. We _knew_ , and we still didn't save him.” He wiped the back of his hand over his face, still staring at Sam's slack features. “Jesus Christ, what am I gonna do?”

I wanted to ask myself the same question, but I already knew the answer.

* * *

Dean didn’t question me when I brought him a cup of coffee, and his preference for taking it black ( _You put stuff in the coffee, you end up with more coffee. I just drink it ‘cause it helps me stay awake_.) was on my side; the bitterness of the coffee itself neatly covered the taste of the pill I’d crushed into it.

It didn’t take long. It had been two and a half days since Dean had had anything like food or sleep; the caffeine in the cup had no real chance of overcoming the drugs. Within fifteen minutes his head was drooping; when he started to slide in his chair I went over and heaved him to his feet. At the movement he roused enough to mutter a protest.

“I’ll watch for a while,” I said softly. “You need to rest. Don’t worry, Dean, I’ve got it.” He shook his head. “Everything’s OK,” I said, and to my mild surprise he relaxed a little. It must have been the drugs. I got him over to the sleeping bag he’d been ignoring before he went totally limp, and laid him down.

It only took a few minutes to assemble everything I needed. As I dropped my CDC badge into the box I wondered absently if either of them had even realized they were carrying everything they needed for a crossroads deal. Had it been on purpose, or subconscious, or mere coincidence? It certainly made my job easier, however it had happened.

I knew Dean had taken the Impala to his crossroads. I walked. It was a long walk, but I had time, and I wanted Dean to get a little sleep and let the downers work out of his system, so he’d be able to wake up when Sam did. I didn’t think. You can meditate while walking, once you know the trick, and…well, I was afraid that if I thought about what I was doing I wouldn’t be able to go through with it, even to save Dean.

I remember Hell.

The roads were both dirt. There was a struggling streetlight, hardly brighter than the full moon. I scooped out the hole and put the box in it and covered it over again. I straightened, and waited. I refused to look around for the demon, as if bravado was going to help me, but strange though it seems I do still have enough pride for that.

“I have to tell you, you're not exactly who we were expecting.” The voice was female, and amused. I turned to face the demon. It had taken an attractive young woman. She smiled at me and her eyes washed over red, then back to normal. “You're that guy who's been helping the Winchesters make so much trouble the last few months,” she said. “What's up, Dean wimped out?”

“I drugged him,” I said. The demon actually showed a flicker of surprise at that, though she hid it quickly and let her smile widen.

“This is so sweet. What does that boy do that makes people so willing to go to Hell for him?” she asked. “I mean, with you I can guess, but I happen to know that his daddy wasn't into that, so sickeningly obsessed with _his Mary_.” Her voice held loathing, and a thread of longing; that's why I can pity the demons, even as they make my stomach turn. They can remember when they could feel love, and they know they can't anymore. It's just one more part of the torment, in the end. Ruby even used it; when she told Sam she remembered being human, she wasn't lying. They _all_ do. Most of them just try not to.

“I don't think I could explain it to you,” I said. “But it's not important. I'm here to deal, and that's all that matters.”

“Mmmm, yes,” the demon said. “But explain to me why I should want _your_ soul, when all I have to do is wait for Dean to wake up and I can have his instead?” She moved in close to me and leaned in as if to kiss me, murmuring the last few words into my ear.

“For one thing, I'm not asking for ten years,” I said, matching her tone. The demon pulled back to look into my face, once more trying to bury her surprise. I tried not to show that I'd noticed; better to let her think she had the upper hand.

“Now that's new,” she said. “Why would you even do that?”

I shrugged, but didn't smile; I was sure if I tried it would come out all wrong. “I know I'm not really the one you want,” I said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. “I'm willing to negotiate on that basis.” And all I could do was hope—or pray, Father, please—that this particular demon didn't know why it was so important that Dean Winchester condemn himself to Hell.

“That's true,” the demon said thoughtfully. She looked me up and down, scorn plain on her face. “You're not the one I'm supposed to be dealing with, and talking to you could get me into a lot of trouble. So...convince me.” She stepped away from me and crossed her arms over her chest. If I hadn't been able to see the smoke under her skin, the sight would have been enticing; the young woman's body was clothed in a dress with a very low neckline.

I met the demon's eyes and said simply, “I'm an angel.”

There was a long, long moment of silence.

“If you're going to spout crap I think this negotiation is over,” the demon said at last.

“Look at me,” I said, and I could feel my voice changing. “Really _look_ , demon, and you'll see it. My Grace is gone, but you can see where it used to be, if you look. This is what remains of me.”

The demon's face was a mask of disbelief, but her eyes narrowed. Like angels, demons have access to senses humans don't; unlike angels, they have to consciously use many of them.

I could see it when the demon found what she was looking for; the young woman's brown eyes went wide and the demon actually took a step back. The smoke of its true form roiled, perturbed.

I said, “Relax, I couldn't smite you if I wanted to.” Oh, and I wanted to. “I'm too far gone for that.”

“Your name,” the demon demanded tightly, all hints of her lazy amusement gone.

I drew a deep breath. “Castiel. I was Castiel.”

“I need to—”

“No!” I cut in. “We make this deal now, or not at all. Think of it.” I made my voice low and coaxing, a seducer's voice; the incongruity of it almost choked me. “Think of it, when you return with a contract on an angel—your boss will love it. Dean, Sam, they live hunters' lives; odds are you'll have another shot at them. But this? Is a one-time offer.” I let my voice shake on that, trying to imply that I was too afraid—that if we didn't do it now, I'd lose my nerve, and I saw the demon buy it. It wasn't even a bluff, not really.

“One month,” she said, and again I pretended I didn't hear how unsteady her voice was. “One month, thirty days only, and if you try to welch or weasel your way out, Sam drops dead. He's back to rotten meat in no time and we'll go talk to Dean after all.” Her whole posture was a challenge. I could see that she expected me to refuse.

I took one long step forward and grabbed her by the biceps. For a moment we stood there frozen, and then I bent and pressed my lips to the demon's.

She tasted like blood and ash.

* * *

He was standing on the porch when I got within sight of the old house. I could see the tension in his posture from yards away, even in what little light trickled through the windows from the camping lanterns inside. He didn't hail me, but I could feel the weight of his eyes on me. I mounted the sagging steps carefully and went to stand before him. This was _too_ familiar, going to Dean to account for my failings.

“What did you do, Cas?” he asked, and I almost rocked back, away from the fury in his voice. That at least was different, not cold but burning and barely contained.

“You know what I did,” I said.

He nodded, sharp and quick. “And you dosed me.”

“Yes.” 

He turned away. I took a step after him. “Dean—” I began, and at the sound of my voice he whirled. I saw the punch coming but it didn't occur to me to try to block it until it was too late; he caught me square in the jaw and I went down hard amid the sound of the floorboards creaking under the impact.

“You stupid son of a _bitch_ ,” Dean bellowed. He stood over me, panting, for a long moment before turning on his heel and stalking the thirty feet or so to his car. I expected him to throw himself into the driver's seat and leave, but instead he just bent over the hood, back to me, his head hanging.

Eventually I sat up. “Well, that wasn't what I expected,” I muttered, and prodded at my jaw, wincing. It was going to be a hell of a bruise, I could feel it already.

“If you expected him to be happy, you don't know him as well as you think you do,” Sam said from the door. I hadn't heard him coming, but I was too worn out to jump.

“Sam,” I said. I smiled, even though it hurt. “I’m so glad to see you.”

Sam shrugged and came out onto the porch, offering me a hand up. When I was standing he said, “You made a crossroads deal for me.” I nodded, and he closed his eyes and sighed. “Why?” he asked simply.

“Because you can’t stop a determined suicide,” I said, which was incongruous enough that he couldn’t come up with a response. “Dean was going to make a deal, Sam, and I couldn’t keep him knocked out for the rest of his life. And Dean _cannot_ be allowed to make a deal. If he does, it’s literally the end of the world.”

Sam looked me over carefully for several seconds before he said, “OK. Now I think you have to tell me.”

I sighed in my turn and shrugged agreement.

We went into the house and made ourselves as comfortable as we could get. There were only two reasonably sound chairs in the place—I fetched the one Dean had been using from the room we’d had Sam laid out in, as Sam pretty clearly didn’t want to go in there, not that I could blame him.

“The first thing is where demons come from,” I said when we were both settled, leaning on the one table that would take the weight. “They aren't born that way, they don't come into existence _ex nihilo;_ they're made. The souls in Hell are tortured, and they're given an offer: if they take up the knife, become torturers themselves, they're spared. In Hell, you're receiving pain or you're inflicting it, and there's no other option. And once you do it for long enough, you change. Demons all used to be human.” It was a small consolation, that I wouldn't become a demon; I wasn't human enough for that. Angels don't have _souls_ , not in the way humans do, and falling hadn't granted me one. The part of me that would survive the death of my body couldn't be twisted that way. They could make me insane, no doubt, but they couldn't make me a demon.

I drummed my fingers on the table. Sam didn't press me, perhaps understanding that I needed to order my thoughts. “I told you time in Hell moves faster.” Sam nodded. “Dean—in my timeline—Dean was in Hell for forty years. He told them no for thirty.”

Sam sucked in a shocked breath. I let him think about it. “You're telling me Dean tortured people in Hell,” he said at last. “Dean turned into a demon?”

“No. No, it didn't get that far.” I reached him before it could, though only barely; his soul was riddled with rot when my light fell on him, and he had cringed away from me. He'd been fighting the change, but there's only so much even the strongest will can do. “He was rescued.” Sam was just looking at me, and he looked _hurt_. “Sam, don't...everyone breaks, _everyone_ breaks, it's only because it was Hell that he lasted as long as he did. There's no shame in coming to the end of your strength.”

Sam let all his air out in one long shudder and said evenly, “OK. OK, fine. How is that relevant to the end of the world?”

“It's relevant because Dean was something special. He wasn't in Hell to pay for the sins of his life, and he wasn't there because he made a selfish deal. He was there to save someone, and that made him different. He was _righteous_. So when he took the knife, a prophecy was fulfilled.” I cleared my throat and quoted, “And it is written that the first seal shall be broken when a righteous man sheds blood in Hell.”

“The first seal?” Sam said. “Seal on what?”

“Lucifer's Cage,” I said. “Lucifer...when he was cast down, he wasn't just barred from Heaven; he was imprisoned in Hell.”

“Lucifer,” Dean said from behind me. “You mean the Devil. Satan, Old Nick, pleased to meet you hope you guess my name: that Lucifer.” I hadn't heard him coming, which said something about how tired I was, and had no idea how much he'd heard.

“Yes,” I said, ignoring the skepticism in his voice. “There are hundreds of seals, but only sixty-six of them have to be broken, and only the first and the last are fixed. And if they break, and Lucifer gets out, it’s the beginning of the Apocalypse.”

“And the first is me cuttin' on people in Hell, because I'm so awesome.” The sarcasm was so thick it was all but visible. He walked over to stand next to the table, leaning on it to form the third corner of the triangle with me and Sam. His gaze on me was flat and opaque.

“Righteous,” I said. “Dean, you two save people, put your own lives on the line to do good. Why is that so hard to understand? You never got it, never, no matter how many times—” I cut myself off, realizing that I'd gotten a little too loud, and sighed again. “It doesn't matter. Just...accept that it's bad if Lucifer gets out, OK? And you going to Hell will start that process.”

“The night we met, you said you watched the world end because you waited too long to do the right thing,” Sam said thoughtfully. “The first time, you let Dean make the deal?”

Of course Sam would remember that. I said, “No, you two met me after Dean was out of Hell.” He didn't really remember his rescue, which had always seemed terribly unfair to me. ( _I had a weird dream last night_. A long pause. _It started out a nightmare, but then there was a light. And then I woke up_. He pushed the remnants of pancakes around his plate. _I think the light was you_.) I slouched in my chair and let my head fall back. “I couldn't let you make the deal, not knowing what would happen. It's the end of the world, Dean, and I'm only one person.” And perhaps things could have been different, knowing from the beginning that Lilith's life was the final seal—but it was _not_ written that Sam had to be the one to kill her, and this way Dean would be safe.

“You could have told me,” Dean said tightly.

I dragged my gaze up to meet his furious eyes and snapped, “Would it have mattered?” He tried to glare, but after a second he looked away and I felt an angry smile stretch my lips. “You'd have sold yourself for Sam, convinced yourself you weren't really the Righteous Man, Dean, I know you would, and it would be the end of the world because you don't think you deserve to be saved!” My voice rose as I spoke and by the last few words I was shouting, lunging to my feet. Sam drew back a little, startled, but Dean just closed his eyes for a moment. I took a deep breath and let it out. “People do crazy things when they're grieving,” I said, in something closer to a normal tone. “I couldn't risk it. I couldn't risk trying to keep you contained until you calmed down enough to listen. You're good at getting out of things, and I have to sleep sometime.” I looked straight into Dean's eyes and lied. “It was me or the Apocalypse. So it was me.”

Into the silence that followed, Sam said cautiously, “Cas, aren't you...you said Dean was special because he made his deal to save someone. You're saving the world here, man, I think you qualify.”

“I don’t,” I said. Sam looked extremely dubious, a perfectly sensible reaction. “I'm not...I wouldn't have done it if there was any chance that I could be the Righteous Man.”

“How can you be sure of that?” Sam asked.

I leaned on the table with one hand and rubbed my eyes with the other. “Ask Bobby about the research he's doing on me.” Sam looked a little sheepish. “It's OK, Sam, I don't mind.”

We were all silent for a second. “Guess we all gotta do some research,” Dean said, sounding like he was forcing himself to be brisk and businesslike. “We have ten years to get you outta this, I guess, but sooner’s better than later.”

I bit my lip.

“Wait—how long did you get, Cas?” I looked down at my hands and Dean barked, “How long?”

“A month,” I said. I looked up. Sam looked dismayed; Dean's face was perfectly blank but as I watched his hands tightened on the edge of the table till his knuckles went white. “Jesus Christ,” he said.

“She didn't want to deal with me,” I said. “She knew she was supposed to talk to you even though she didn't know exactly why.”

“Jesus _fucking_ Christ,” Dean repeated.

“He has nothing to do with it,” I said.

Neither of them laughed.

* * *

We spent the rest of the night in the house; Dean claimed he didn’t need the sleep but Sam and I collectively overruled him. For my own part, I fell into sleep like dark water closing over my head, sudden and total. My endurance is good but I was wrung out with fear and adrenaline. I didn’t dream, at least.

In the morning we packed the car in strained silence and headed for Sioux Falls. Dean put a tape in as soon as we were on the road, turning the volume up to nearly painful levels. Apparently he’d decided he didn’t feel like talking; I wasn’t in the mood to argue the point and it seemed Sam wasn’t either.

We pulled up to the house in the early afternoon. The quiet when Dean turned the car off and the music died was strange. By the time we climbed out of the car Bobby had come to stand on his porch, no doubt drawn by the sound of the Impala’s engine. When he realized there were three of us, his face danced through a series of emotions, surprise and joy and then thin-lipped suspicion; he’d have been glaring at me, I was sure, if he hadn’t been busy glaring at Dean. After a second he shook himself and said slowly, “Sam, it’s…good to see you up and around.”

Sam shrugged and said, “You can thank Cas.”

Bobby’s eyes went wide again. For a second no one spoke.

“All right, I think I need a drink while you tell me exactly how all this happened.”

I didn’t miss the fact that Bobby kept an eye on whether Sam winced crossing the threshold.

Once inside, I tried to let Dean and Sam do the explaining, but they were having none of it—to the extent that Dean pointedly took a sip of his beer every time I tried to get him to contribute. Bobby, having gotten over his initial shock, was at least an interested audience. He accepted everything with his usual irritable calm, though I did think he was startled by how short my time was. When the explanation was over, he nodded and sat back in his chair. “Well,” he said. “I can’t say I’m pleased about how it happened, but I’m glad Sam’s OK. Now that you’re here we can go over what I’ve got about this Devil’s Gate. Because I’m pretty sure I got a rough idea where it is.”

* * *

Bobby’s map of southern Wyoming was too large-scale to show the features that we needed to spot in order to pinpoint the location of Samuel Colt’s trap. Dean kept declaring that we should just head for the center of the clear area, because that was where it would be; Bobby and Sam insisted we needed to have a better idea of what we were looking for before we went “ridin’ off half-cocked.” In the interims Sam told us what had happened at Cold Oak, or at least most of it; I got the feeling he wasn't telling us everything, but Dean didn't push him so I didn't either.

We were well into the fourth iteration of the argument when there was a knock on the door.

“You expecting anyone?” Dean asked, and Bobby shook his head.

The three of us took backup positions as Bobby went to answer the door. “What?” I heard him bark as he yanked the door open, and then there was a long silence. 

“Well, ain't you gonna invite me in?” 

Ellen Harvelle.

“Let's see if you can come in without bein' invited,” Bobby said, clearly recovered from his surprise and over the edge into suspicion.

“Is there anything that can't?” Ellen asked. A moment later she came into my view, looking tired and sad and rigidly controlled.

“Better safe than sorry,”

“Ellen,” Dean said. He still had a hand on his gun, but it didn't seem like he planned to use it. 

“Dean,” Ellen replied, with a grimace that didn't make it to a smile.

“Are you all right? What happened?” As Sam spoke Bobby stalked into the kitchen, emerging a second later with a shot glass full of a clear liquid.

“I wasn't there when it burned,” Ellen said, and looked down at the glass Bobby held out to her. “Is this really necessary?”

“Just a belt of holy water, shouldn't hurt,” Bobby said implacably. Ellen flicked her eyes to the ceiling but took the glass and downed it like a shot.

“Whiskey now, if you don't mind,” she said. Bobby nodded and we all followed him to the kitchen. “I was supposed to be there with everyone else, but...we ran out of pretzels, of all things.” Dean kicked out one of the kitchen chairs for her and she dropped into it as Bobby refilled her glass with alcohol. “It was just dumb luck. I was about to head back when Ash called, panicking.” Bobby gave her the shot and she drank it with the same efficiency as the water. “He told me to look in the safe, and then the call cut out.” She paused, staring at her fingers on the glass. “By the time I got back the flames were sky-high. And everybody was dead...I couldn't have been gone more than fifteen minutes.” Her voice had gone low and rough and we all gave her a second to collect herself.

“Ellen, I'm sorry,” Sam said quietly.

She swiped at her eyes. “A lot of good people died in there, and I got to live. Lucky me, right?”

Bobby, in a clear attempt to distract her, said, “Now you mentioned a safe?”

“Yeah,” she said, and visibly pulled herself together. “A hidden safe we keep... _kept_ in the basement.”

“They get what was in it?”

“No,” Ellen said, and pulled a map from her pocket. She spread it out on the table.

“Wyoming,” Dean said. “Shit. Is this what I think it is?”

It wasn't really familiar to me; an angel's sense of place doesn't match up very well to human maps. But I knew what it had to be. “If you think it's a map of Samuel Colt's trap, then yes,” I said. “Ash worked this out?”

“Yes,” Ellen said, with weary pride. 

“I need to check something,” Bobby said, and hurried into the living room. He returned quickly with a large book and opened it. Dean lasted for longer than I would have expected as Bobby looked back and forth between the map and his book before he said, “Come on, what've you got?”

“Each of these is a church, a frontier church,” Bobby said. “And Colt built private railway lines connecting them.”

“Five points on a circle,” Sam said, like he was realizing.

Bobby nodded and fished a pencil out of his pocket; he glanced at Ellen for permission and when she nodded he sketched the lines out lightly. When he was done, the pentagram was obvious.

“Iron lines, demons can't cross it,” Sam said. “They're circling, waiting for something to break the trap so they can get in.”

“Or get _out_ ,” I said. “Azazel doesn't technically have to go in himself; he could just send Jake in with the Colt to open the Gate. But then the demons would be trapped there—on Earth, yes, but not able to wreak havoc in the wider world.”

“We're sure the trap's still intact?” Dean asked. “That's a lot of line to keep in good shape.”

“They ain't gone in yet,” Bobby said. “Good enough for me.”

“OK, who the hell is Jake? And Azazel?” Ellen asked.

Dean and Sam exchanged looks. “Jake is...another guy my age. Azazel is a demon. He's _the_ demon.”

Ellen drew a surprised breath. “You mean the one that killed your ma,” she said after a second.

“Yeah,” Dean said. “And Jake is the bastard who— _tried_ to kill Sam a couple days ago.” If Ellen noticed the pause in the sentence she didn't say anything. “He's working with Yellow Eyes.”

“If we stop Jake from breaking any of the lines, nothing else matters,” Bobby said. “We can just leave it alone.”

“No!” Dean and Sam exclaimed in unison, and looked at each other again. By silent agreement Dean went on, “One: Cas says that Yellow Eyes shows up and gets his ass shot.”

“Don’t think it was his ass, actually,” I murmured. Everyone ignored me.

“Two: When that Gate opens, Bobby...Dad gets out.”

Silence fell.

“What do you mean, Cas says?” Ellen said at last.

* * *

I was helping Dean and Sam load the cars when Bobby tapped me on the shoulder. “Got a second?” he asked. “I could use some help down in the cellar.” I glanced at Dean, who jerked his head at the house, and said, “Sure.”

When we were down the steps, Bobby turned to me with his arms crossed over his chest and said, “When I told you to help Dean, this wasn't what I meant.”

 _Damn it_ , I thought, and my hands curled into fists at my sides. “It was the only thing I could do,” I said. I maybe sounded a little defensive.

“I get that,” Bobby said, and sighed. “Or at least I get that you thought that, and you weren't necessarily thinkin' as clear as you could've been.”

“He'd have done it, and it would have been—”

“Yeah, the Apocalypse, I get that too. It's just...” He sighed again, and uncrossed his arms, and his whole body slumped. “You know his daddy did the same thing last year—made a deal for him.”

“I made a deal for Sam.” Since it didn't seem like we were actually doing anything, I sat on the steps.

“You made a deal for Sam so Dean _wouldn't_ , and don't get me wrong; if he'd come back here telling me he did that I'd've throttled him myself. But Dean didn't handle it well, last year. Boy doesn't think his life is worth much, I don't think.”

“He's wrong.”

“I know that,” Bobby said, “but that don't mean he does.” He looked me over for a second. “How's he gonna feel when you go to Hell for him, boy?”

“It's not _for him_ ,” I said, and Bobby made a sour face.

“It is my strong recommendation that you keep saying that whenever Dean can hear you, but don't think you're foolin' me,” he said. “I know what it looks like when someone's got it bad.”

“What do you want me to say, Bobby?”

“Well _I won't do it again_ is probably pointless,” Bobby said dryly, after a pause that lasted longer than I really understood. “So say 'you're welcome'.”

I tilted my head. 

“Because that's what you say when someone says thank you,” Bobby prompted.

“Ah.” I watched him until he raised his eyebrows at me. “You're welcome.”

Bobby nodded and pushed past me to go up the stairs. “Don't do it again,” he said.

* * *

We found the first rail line well before dark, but by the time the tiny cemetery came into view dusk was approaching; there didn't seem to be much in the way of actual roads inside the huge trap. The Impala's suspension squeaked and groaned over the dirt surface of the track we were following.

We didn't know which direction Jake would approach from, so we parked the vehicles a fair distance from the ancient fence that defined the cemetery proper. It was incongruous; the fence was falling down in places, little more than a symbol, and most of the headstones were barely legible, leaning, or both. But the mausoleum at the center was in perfect repair; its elaborate lock gleamed softly in the slanting sunset light, looking almost polished. We didn't take long to look though.

By the time we heard him approaching it was full dark, though the night was clear and the full moon cast enough light to see by, once our eyes adjusted. Jake didn't walk like a man going to his triumph; he moved like he was desperate, and I wondered what Azazel had threatened him with. Like Ava, like Sam, Jake was not inherently a bad person—but like Ava he had been pushed to his limits, and like Sam he had convinced himself he was doing the right thing. Sam waited till Jake was most of the way to his goal before he stepped out of his concealment and said, “Howdy, Jake.”

Jake stopped cold. “Wait,” he said, disbelief ringing in his voice. “You were dead. I killed you.”

“Yeah,” Sam said. “It didn't take.” We all moved so Jake could see us, ringing him in, but he only had eyes for Sam.

“I put a knife through your spine—you _can't_ be alive.”

“Looks like you're wrong there,” Dean said. “Gonna kill you for hurting my brother, by the way.”

Suddenly Jake grinned. “Sam tried that,” he said. “He couldn't do it. You more of a tough guy than him?”

“Nah,” Dean said easily. 

“Hey, lady, do me a favor,” Jake said. “Put that gun to your head.” I could hear the thread of power in his voice, but there was nothing I could do to shield Ellen from it. “You too, buddy,” he said to me.

He didn't seem to notice that I hesitated for a moment before pressing the barrel of the Beretta to my temple.

“See, that Ava girl was right. Once you give in to it, there's all sorts of Jedi mind tricks you can learn.”

Dean's eyes darted between me and Ellen, and I dropped the barest hint of a wink. Sam demanded, “Let them go.” Jake just smiled as Ellen forced out, “Shoot him.”

“You'll be mopping up skull before you get a shot off. So everyone but my buddies put your guns down.” Sam and Dean and Bobby hesitated, then did as he said. “OK, thank you,” Jake said. For a long second nobody moved.

I was on the far side of the half-circle from Ellen, so when Jake turned and darted for the door I couldn't help; Dean and Bobby dove for her and Dean knocked her hand out of line just as her finger tightened on the trigger of her gun. Sam crouched and scooped his Taurus from the ground. And I leveled my gun at Jake's back; my shot and Sam's were simultaneous.

The mechanism in the door began to rattle and Sam and I both shot again. Jake fell to his knees and collapsed onto his side, his breathing already labored and rough. Ellen stopped fighting Bobby and Dean and the three of them turned to watch as Sam stepped over to Jake, his gun held ready. Jake rolled onto his back, fighting for breath.

I thought about shooting him.

Instead I flicked the safety on and tucked my gun away as Sam shot Jake neatly in the forehead, his face a mask. The hand Jake had extended, to ward or to plead, dropped to his side.

Bobby gave Sam a look as he passed on the way to the door of the mausoleum; Ellen did too, but hers was far more understanding. Women, I've noticed, tend to be far more pragmatic about such things.

We watched the mechanism of the lock spin, the inner circle clockwise and the outer ring the opposite—widdershins, the direction of ill omen. “This is what we want to be happening?” Ellen said doubtfully, and Bobby made a helpless movement of his head. 

“I just hope we got everything right,” he said. The lock ground to a halt. “Well, we're committed now.” Dean pulled the Colt from the door and Bobby barked, “Take cover!”

The doors shuddered and shook as we backed off, putting tombstones between us and the crypt. Just as Dean crouched next to his brother, the doors burst open and the demons rushed out.

I had never seen so many in one place on Earth before. In Hell, the hordes had had more definition, making use of the fabric of their plane to give themselves approximations of bodies—hideous, yes, but comprehensible. This mass was _hundreds_ of demons, twisting around each other in their horrible exuberance to escape. But around them, appearing to walk on the ground, I could see the others, the shades. The denizens of Hell who had not yet completed their transformations. They flickered in and out of visibility as they went. The demons vanished into the night beyond the cemetery's wall, and from there we just had to hope.

“Guys,” Ellen said. She and Bobby scrambled out from behind their stones and I followed with Sam at my heels. Ellen and I took one door, Bobby and Sam leaned on the other. I avoided looking through the opening. 

Over my shoulder I could see Dean, checking the Colt, and I saw it when Azazel blinked into existence at his shoulder. Dean caught the flicker and turned, aiming even as he moved, but Azazel was faster; he yanked the Colt from Dean's hand to his own and spun it theatrically as he said, “Boys shouldn't play with Daddy's guns.” He gestured and Dean went flying. He came down half-on a tombstone and I winced but there was nothing I could do; I had no part in this fight. The door shifted under my shoulder.

“Dean!” Sam exclaimed, and ran for his brother. Bobby staggered as the force of the door knocked against him. “Help him,” I hissed to Ellen, and she nodded, darting across the gap.

Sam charged at Azazel's back, but the demon waved again and Sam flew back into a tree as Azazel called, “I'll get to you in a minute, champ, but I'm proud of you. Knew you had it in ya.” He strolled over to Dean, who was trying to roll to his feet, and pinned him to the tombstone.

I couldn't hear Azazel's words as he crouched in front of Dean, but I knew what he was saying. Asking Dean if he was sure his brother had been brought back whole and uncorrupted. It was pure cruelty, meant to drive the first wedge between them to prepare them for their enmity as the vessels.

I had warned him, but even from my position at the crypt doors I could see the way it hurt Dean to hear it.

Azazel stopped talking and stood, stepping back a little. Everything about the way he moved spoke of satisfaction. Sam struggled against his tree, but he couldn't get any closer as Azazel leveled the Colt at Dean—and then John Winchester's shade coalesced into being and grabbed, wrenching the demon-form from the human body. Azazel's unfortunate host collapsed to the ground, its eyes open, as John grappled with the demon. The fight didn't last long—John was only a shade, and fresh from a hundred years of torment at that—but it didn't have to. By the time Azazel had thrown John off and poured itself back into the body, Dean had retrieved the fallen Colt from where the demon had dropped it. Azazel staggered to his feet just as Dean thumbed back the hammer.

The sound of the shot seemed too loud.

I might have expected the cinematically perfect headshot, one neat bullet hole in the center of the forehead, but instead Dean's shot hit Azazel in the shoulder. The demon didn't cry out, but his incredulity was obvious.

Perhaps Azazel had expected to live to _see_ his master's return.

He shuddered as he lit up from within, the demon's essence showing through the skin as it was consumed by the magic of Colt's gun.

I tore my attention away and dropped to one knee, pulling my knife out as I did to slash across my palm. My door swung wide again, but that was all right. I grabbed the edge of the tarp we'd laid over the ground and pulled it back, revealing the sigils that lined the threshold.

The incantation was short; it had been created for use in battle. For an angel, Grace would have been sufficient, but I had to use blood. As I finished the last word I pressed my bloody palm to the center sigil and it flared, blue-white light too bright to look at. And from all around us the demons screamed as they were drawn back.

Bobby had been skeptical about the whole thing, asking why no one knew about this spell. I'd had to explain to him several times that it only worked under very specific circumstances—when the threshold between Hell and Earth was directly breached, as it had been here. Finally he'd rolled his eyes and told me I had better be sure about this, and since I knew it was the best concession I was going to get I'd just nodded.

Bobby and Ellen and I cleared the path to the mausoleum again as the demons rushed past us in reverse. I hoped none of the escaping shades were caught in the tow; the spell itself only drew the demonic, but in their panic to fight the pull some of the demons might drag shades back with them. In the end the doors slammed shut of their own accord, the locking mechanism whirring at our backs as we turned.

Turned in time to see John putting one hand on Dean's shoulder, smiling. Turning to smile at Sam as well. They both stared at him. I saw Dean try to return the smile, and Sam's tiny nod, and then John stepped back and light grew around him and he flickered and vanished.

I stayed with Ellen and Bobby as Sam and Dean stood over the body of Azazel's host, speaking in quiet voices.

“Looks like that spell of yours worked,” Bobby said.

“Yeah,” I replied absently.

“All those sigils were Enochian,” he said. Ellen turned an incredulous look on him.

“Yeah,” I said again, and sagged against the door. I fumbled in my pocket for the bandages I'd prepped, pressing gauze over the wound. It was shallow, but it stung like mad.

Bobby nodded and said, “The incantation too.”

“ _Yes_ ,” I snapped. “Was there something you were getting at?”

Sam and Dean turned, their attention drawn by the tone of my voice, and made their way over to us just in time to hear Bobby say, “You told me to look under Thursday, and you know what I found? The ruler of that day, his name is Cassiel. You want to fill us in on what exactly that means, _Cas_?”

“It means your text had a transcription error. The correct form is Castiel.”

“Bobby, we just killed the demon,” Dean said. “Can we celebrate for a minute before you give Cas the third degree?”

“I dunno,” Bobby said, glaring at me. “I'd kinda like to know if I've been consortin' with an angel, wouldn't you?” And there it was. 

They all looked at me. Bobby and Sam looked like they had figured something out; Ellen clearly didn't believe a word of it. But the one I cared about was Dean, who waited a second before he said, “OK, you know the longer you wait to laugh the worse it gets.”

“Who's laughing?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest. I managed to make myself meet his eyes, at least, and that was right; only once had I backed down from Dean's gaze.

Dean's eyes widened. “Come on! An angel?” I shrugged. Dean announced to the world in general, “This is crap.” He fixed Bobby with a glare. “You're saying that _Cas_ is an _angel_.”

“I got a lot of research that says so, and you'll notice he ain't exactly denying it,” Bobby said.

“Yeah, well, a lot of people have delusions of grandeur,” Dean said. “Cas, come on. You said...you said I took you to a whorehouse, for God's sake.”

“You thought I shouldn't die a virgin. Wanted to know why I hadn't done any 'cloud-seeding',” I said.

Dean blinked.

“We are going back to your place,” he said to Bobby, “and you are going to show me all this research of yours.”

* * *

“So that Jimmy guy,” Dean said slowly. “He's...I mean, you're not him. You didn't used to be him.”

“No,” I said, from where I sat on Bobby's couch. “No, Jimmy was my vessel. I went to see him to tell him not to listen when I...well, the present-day version of me...I told him not to say yes.”

Sam, who was behind the desk, narrowed his eyes at me. “I thought you were trying not to change things that might get noticed,” he said, calm but pointed. I shrugged.

“If it had come to that it would've been too late anyway. I didn't take Jimmy as a vessel until after we'd rescued Dean from Hell.”

Dean suppressed a flinch and said, “I just...seriously, what's so special about me? I'm just a guy.”

“We were told that we needed to rescue you before you broke the first seal,” I said. “But that wasn't really it. They wanted the seal to break—Heaven did. They wanted to start the Apocalypse. They were tired of the world in God's absence.”

Everyone took that in. Dean looked horrified, shading quickly into anger; Sam and Bobby seemed mostly surprised. Ellen still didn’t buy it, but she also didn't seem to have any interest in expressing her incredulity; she sat in the armchair in the corner silently, and I suspected she was dozing.

“The _angels_ wanted the world to end?” Sam said finally. He sounded shocked.

“Yes,” I said. He frowned.

“OK, but, then why bother rescuing me at all?” Dean asked.

I sighed. “Dean, angels besides me need vessels too.”

He stared at me. After a second Bobby said, “Think you're gonna have to explain, Cas.”

A few sentences in, Dean's shouting woke Ellen up.

* * *

By the time we all went to bed, it was so late it almost wasn't worth the trouble. Bobby ceded his bedroom to Ellen; he and Sam took the twin beds in the tiny guest room. Dean and I slogged down the stairs to the panic room. I sat on the edge of the cot to take my boots off. I had one unlaced before I glanced up and realized Dean was still standing in the door, leaning on the jamb.

“You know how to break one of these deals, don't you?” he said.

“Technically? Yes,” I said.

“As soon as we wake up—” he began.

“We can't,” I said.

“What are you talkin' about, Cas? You wanna let it go till the last minute?”

“If we break the deal, Sam will die,” I said, flatly. I really, really didn't want to _talk_ about it. I just wanted to forget what was going to happen until my time was up.

“But there has to be a way,” Dean protested. “There has to be a way around it.”

“First time around, you and Sam tried for a year,” I said. Sam had tried, anyway, and Sam was good at that kind of thing. “If there had been a way, you'd have found it.”

“But you're...you used to be an angel!”

“And if I still was, I still couldn't break the deal without Sam dying,” I snapped. “I go to Hell or _Sam dies_. That's the deal. It's not over until I go to Hell. We could rescue you because by then the deal was complete. It doesn't say I have to stay in Hell, but I do have to go there.”

“Damn it,” Dean said, pushing off the wall. “You sound like you _want_ to die.”

I sat up straight and toed off my boots. “Dean...I've been to Hell. I know what it's like. So no, I don't want to. But if I have to go back to save the world...well, it's better than the alternative.”

Dean drew himself up and took a deep breath, and I braced myself for the explosion. But after a second his shoulders slumped and he came over to drop onto the cot next to me. “What do you want to do?”

I blinked and turned my head to be able to see him better. “What do you mean?”

“For the next month. What do you want to do?”

“Right now I want to sleep,” I said. “We can make plans in the morning.”

Dean sighed and stood up again, shrugging out of his flannel shirt as he went. “Have you been to the Grand Canyon?”

* * *

We didn't hunt anything that month.

* * *

The hotel was a lot nicer than the usual. We'd been there for a week. I don't know what Sam was doing with his time, because he had his own room.

Dean and I, meanwhile, were only getting out of bed occasionally.

“Are you sure?” he asked. “I mean, we could get a nice dinner or something. We don't have to stay in here.”

“This is fine,” I said. “This is better than fine. This is what I want to do until it's time to leave.”

Dean rolled onto his back, the sheets winding around his legs. “And you really don't want me to come with you?”

“It's not safe, Dean,” I said. “The hellhounds will be there for me, but they won't hesitate to attack anyone else who's nearby.” I didn't quite manage to suppress the shudder, and of course Dean could feel it; he turned onto his side again to face me. “I'll take my phone so you can...you don't have to burn the body, there won't be anything left to make a ghost, but I'd rather no one track down Jimmy over this.”

Dean's lips tightened and he lowered his eyes briefly. I waited. Finally he asked, “What do you want right now, Cas?”

I took a second to get control of my voice. “I just don't want to think about it,” I said. “Can you—”

“Whatever you want,” he said, and leaned in to kiss me.

* * *

I was well out into the woods when I heard the first howl. I kept walking. They wouldn't have the fun of chasing me; I could deny them that.

My phone beeped at two minutes to midnight. I stopped and took my coat off and tucked the phone into one pocket and folded the cloth as well as I could. There was no convenient rock to lay it on, so I set it on the ground instead and moved perhaps twenty feet away—far enough that the hounds wouldn't care, close enough that Sam and Dean would be able to see the body. I sat in lotus and tried to calm my breathing. My hands on my knees shook; my whole body shook. 

The howls were closer.

I caught the first hint of movement and my eyes slammed shut without my permission, and I couldn't make myself open them; I had imagined facing them with dignity, but it was all I could manage not to leap up and run. They circled me, taunting. 

I felt the first hot breath on my face.

* * *

When the sensation of movement faded, the first thing I was aware of was _pain_.

It radiated from the hollow my Grace left behind, burning, the remnants of my nature rebelling against my surroundings. I choked and my knees buckled and I only just caught myself before going face-first into the ground. Shards of bone dug into my palms and my legs.

“You're here,” a voice said, full of sickening glee. I knew that voice, for all it had been filtered through a human throat the last time I heard it. I looked up. Alastair smiled down at me, his ragged teeth bared. “When they told me, I almost couldn't believe it,” he said conversationally. “But I see it's true.” He gestured, the low red light glinting on his claws, and I realized why my balance was so completely off.

It had been so long since I'd been able to feel my wings that I'd almost forgotten—hadn't really realized that such a _human_ conception would still be part of my self-image. I bowed my head.

“Castiel,” Alastair purred. He put one hand under my chin, a parody of tenderness with the tips of the claws prickling, and tilted my face up again. “Castiel, my angel, you and I are going to be spending some quality time getting to know each other. Is there anything you'd like to say before we get started?”

“I'm not yours,” I said. I was proud of myself; it came out perfectly firm.

Alastair laughed, and the sound of it made me feel sick.

* * *

I decided early on that there was no point in trying not to scream. It would have saved nothing but my pride, and set me up for a harder fall when my resolve failed. It wasn't as if Alastair would have taken less satisfaction in his work if I'd been silent. But I did manage to keep my screams and gasps and sobs mostly wordless; there was no one in Heaven who would have helped me even if they could hear, and I refused to draw Alastair's attention to Dean by speaking his name. It didn't take Alastair long to make me beg him to stop, of course, but I did not scream for help.

He never offered me the knife; he took care to mention that human souls were offered that bargain, but that I didn't qualify. I think he expected me to be surprised, because when I wasn't...that day was particularly difficult.

Alastair would not let me lose track of time, much as I would have liked to. So I knew it had been one hundred and seventy-eight days when I blinked my eyes open to find a demon I didn't recognize standing in front of me. I twitched back against the cold metal; the motion wrenched at my shackles and I smothered a whimper. I would scream for Alastair, but this random demon didn't need to hear me.

It studied me for a long time, its eyes red rather than common black or Alastair’s white. I didn't mind. It could look all it wanted; looking didn't hurt.

At last it said, “I have to tell you, mate, I was expecting someone taller. Or...shinier, maybe.” I mustered the energy to roll my eyes. With Alastair I wouldn't have dared. The demon looked faintly impressed. “When one of my girls came back and told me she had a contract on an angel, well, I didn't know what to think. But the evidence is convincing.” My wings were pinned out like an anatomical model, irregularly enough that there was no position I could take that didn't put pressure on at least one of the spikes. It was, at least, an improvement over choking on the blood of a cut throat, which was what I'd been doing before I passed out the last time. He—the voice suggested this demon had been a man, before his transformation—seemed to take my lack of response as encouragement. “I'm Crowley, by the way. I run the crossroads.” He paused expectantly. I leaned my head back in a vain attempt to find a way to hold it that didn't ache. “Didn't anyone teach you it's polite to introduce yourself?” Crowley asked mildly.

“You know my name,” I said. My voice was nearly normal; the restoration of my body always included my throat, even if I'd screamed myself to muteness. It irked me, distantly, that I didn't sound as beaten as I felt.

“I'm a stickler for etiquette,” the demon said.

I studied him in turn, wondering at my own calm. “Cas,” I said.

The demon looked intrigued. “Really,” he said, drawing the word out. “Just Cas, is it?”

“Ever since I fell,” I said. Alastair always said _Castiel_ ; I didn’t know if he was reminding me or himself.

“What’s interesting is that I’ve asked around,” Crowley mused. “The angel Castiel is still up there, playing the harp or whatever it is you feathery types do. And that means you, my friend, are something extraordinary.”

“Not anymore,” I said.

Crowley appeared to be about to dispute that, but then his head turned as if he’d heard something. “I must be going,” he said jovially. “Have fun.” He vanished.

A moment later Alastair took his place. “Castiel, you’re awake,” he said, and smiled. “Did you miss me?”

I closed my eyes and tried to picture Dean.

* * *

After that, it seemed like Alastair was called away more often. None of the other demons were allowed to touch me, though on occasion one would come to gawk. Crowley, however, became a frequent visitor. He didn’t come every time Alastair left me alone, nor was there any pattern to his visits that I could detect. He usually didn’t even stay long. At first I wondered if he’d been recruited somehow—to worm his way into my trust so that he could betray me later, or an elaborate version of the strategy Dean called Good Cop/Bad Cop—but after a while I decided that I didn’t care. The first time I slipped and mentioned something I didn’t want Alastair to know I was nervous for weeks, but Alastair never showed any sign of knowing; if Crowley was planning to report to him, they were playing a long game. Crowley was someone who wasn’t Alastair, who spoke to me about things that weren’t pain, and that was something to hang my sanity on for as long as it lasted.

* * *

No one sleeps in Hell; sleep is a respite. There's unconsciousness, sometimes, if only for the horror of what might be happening when you wake up, but not sleep. But sometimes when Alastair left me alone I could drift. It helped.

I was drifting, ignoring the numbness in my hands, when I felt the subtle shift in the air that meant a demon and my breathing sped up in reflexive fear. I pried my eyes open, and relaxed a little when I saw it was only Crowley.

He came over to me, much closer than he usually got. Something about him was off; I hadn't yet worked out what when he said, “So tell me, Cas.” He was trying to sound casual and not quite making it. “Do the words _righteous man_ mean anything to you?”

I jerked in surprise and Crowley nodded as if I'd spoken. “Your human pet was supposed to be the Righteous Man,” he continued. “You took his place. Made sure the first seal didn't break.”

I didn't answer, couldn't think of anything to say. If Crowley knew...surely Dean wouldn't make a deal of his free will again, but there were ways, I knew that as well as any other soul in Hell.

“I told you you were something special, angel,” Crowley said, and vanished.

Terror settled in my guts like ice.

* * *

I tried to prepare myself. I was sure they wouldn't hide it from me—that Alastair would want me to know that all of it had been for nothing. Not that Alastair had much interest in opening Lucifer's cage, but he enjoyed his work; he would want to show me Dean because it would hurt me. He'd make me watch as he hurt Dean, make Dean watch as he hurt me. Once Dean was broken, he'd be put to work on me. So I tried.

Days went by, but Alastair didn't say anything. I decided he was waiting to spring it on me once he had Dean. Crowley didn't come to see me again, so I couldn't even plead with him.

Time passed, and more time. I began to wonder if perhaps Dean was being stubborn. I tried not to let myself hope; they would think of something if they had to, and Dean's stubbornness had a few reliable weak spots.

Then I remembered that, for all my time in Hell, for Dean it had been less than three weeks.

* * *

I wasn't sure if Alastair was still there. Sometimes he did that, tied me blinded into place and left, leaving me to plead with an empty room when the pain overwhelmed me. He thought it was funny.

This time I still had my eyes, but they were covered. My whole head was covered, actually, with a rough cloth sack that reeked of rotten blood. It kept making me gag and choke, though I'd managed not to vomit so far. I wasn't sure how much longer that was going to last.

When I heard footsteps I didn't speak. Alastair generally preferred that I wait to be spoken to. I knew it was nonsensical to turn my blind face in the direction of the noise, but I did it anyway; I couldn't entirely help myself.

“Oh, kiddo,” someone said, with a weight of sadness that shocked me. The voice wasn't Alastair's, wasn't Crowley's, wasn't any that I recognized immediately, though it sounded very faintly familiar. I tensed. 

New things, surprising things, are very rarely good in Hell.

The steps crossed the floor as the voice went on, “I would've been here sooner if I'd known. Didn't realize till I dropped in to check up and found ol' Deano looking like someone ran over his dog. Seriously, kid, you really _suck_ at keeping yourself out of trouble, you know that?” The sack was dragged off my head and I found myself looking at the Trickster.

I gaped. For a few seconds I was so astonished that all my various pains faded into insignificance. “What...” I sputtered. “What... _How?_ ”

“I'm like a transformer,” the Trickster said easily. “More than meets the eye.” 

Suddenly I was blindsided by wild hope. “Kill me,” I blurted before he could go on. “Please. Please kill me. Please.”

The Trickster's mouth clicked shut as I babbled. “What? No,” he said, and I moaned.

“If you can get here, you can kill me, kill me for good, _please,_ you don't understand, _I would rather be nothing._ Please. I will beg you if that's what you want, just—” 

“Castiel,” he said sharply. There was a firm command in the word that cut me off instantly, and some small, distant part of my mind registered that as odd. “I'm here to get you _out_.”

Oh.

“I didn't know you could do that,” I said dully, and closed my eyes.

“Do...what?”

“Look like that,” I said.

There was a pause. “I don't think we're having the same conversation here, kiddo.”

“I know it's you, Alastair. You can drop it.”

He didn't reply for long enough that I opened my eyes again. When I did he was staring, the Trickster's face set in an expression of terrible pity that I wouldn't have thought Alastair could manufacture. “I understand why you think that,” he said gently. I shook my head and said nothing else; I'd given too much away already.

He studied me for a second longer and then nodded. “He's got you trussed up good, but I can handle it. Just don't move,” he said briskly. He snapped his fingers, and suddenly I couldn't have moved if I'd wanted to; I was tied down with wire that was looped tight enough to dig into the flesh, but there'd been enough play in it that I could shift a little. Now I just...couldn't move, as if I were encased in sand. He put a hand to the wire around my right wrist, and light flared out from under his fingers, and I gasped; it was pure and clear and bright, brighter than anything I had ever seen here. The wire melted away under it like snow in running water. “Oh, sneaky,” he said. “Those were some nasty sigils. Too bad for him, I've seen every trick in the book.” He freed my other hand the same way, then bent to my feet. When they were loose he stood up straight and snapped his fingers again, and the feeling of restraint winked out, and I was standing on my own feet, clothed and clean and completely uninjured. I couldn't even feel the gnawing ache of my Grace, and the relief of it was so overwhelming that I swayed.

“Now we're leaving,” he said. A grin spread over his face. “Don't worry, though, I'm not gonna leave a mark.”

I didn't know what else to do, so when he caught me by the wrist I didn't fight. And then...

It was _flight_.

It wasn't quite the same; I had never flown when purely mortal. But it was unmistakable. When my feet touched solid ground again I staggered and fell to my knees. Gasped in a breath of air that didn't smell of death and burning. Turned my face up to a clear sky, to the sun that hung in it.

“Welcome back to earth, little bro,” the Trickster said.

I could feel my control wavering, but I clamped down hard on it. “Tell me who you are,” I said, and the Trickster smiled.

“Sorry, kiddo, but I want to do all the explaining at once. Wait till I've got you back in your body, then we'll talk.”

Two fingers reached for my forehead and everything flickered out.

* * *

I woke up flat on my back, spread out like the Vitruvian Man on a soft surface that felt like cloth. I blinked my eyes open and saw a plain white ceiling. Nothing hurt. For a second I didn't remember why that was unusual.

Then memory returned and I bolted upright.

“Chill, kiddo,” the Trickster drawled. I turned my head to stare at him, and he grinned around the lollipop in his mouth. “You should see your face,” he said, a little indistinct. I glanced around the room. It was small and kind of dingy and decorated in the style Sam referred to as _deer hunter chic_. 

Dean's duffel bag sat on the other bed. 

Sam's laptop was serenely charging on the table next to the chair the Trickster was leaning back in.

I looked back at him. He raised his eyebrows expectantly. “Are they here?” I asked. My voice wasn't steady. Instead of answering the Trickster held up a hand, fingers spread. After a second he tucked his thumb into his palm, then his small finger. “What are you doing?” He smirked at me rather than answering, and as he folded down his index finger I heard a key in the lock.

The door swung open and Sam stepped into the room, looking over his shoulder. He was all the way inside before he turned his head and saw me and stopped cold. Dean, close on his heels, ran into his back and protested, “Sam, what the hell?”

Slowly, I raised my hands. Sam stepped to the side. Dean's next sentence cut off half a syllable in as his brother cleared his line of sight. For a second, no one moved.

“Cas,” Dean said. He sounded like he'd been punched.

“Right!” the Trickster exclaimed, and bounced to his feet. Sam and Dean both turned to look at him, with identical stunned expressions. Neither of them was even going for a weapon. The Trickster gestured grandly with his lollipop. “No, no, don't thank me all at once.”

No one said anything. The Trickster rolled his eyes. “Seriously? Not even waving any guns at me? I'm insulted.”

Dean reached into his pocket without taking his eyes off me and withdrew a flask. “Drink this,” he ordered, tossing it across the space between us. I almost fumbled the catch because I couldn't look away from him.

“Come on! Like I'd bring him back all demony,” the Trickster said as I screwed the cap off.

“Shutup,” Dean said, so sharp and fast it was all one word. “Sam, get the shifter knife.”

“It's in my bag,” Sam said. His voice was calm, but I could see the tension in his posture; the shock had worn off enough that both of them were poised to fight. “My bag's right next to...him.”

“Fine. You, off the bed,” Dean said. “Slow, understand?”

I nodded and went, carefully not getting too close to his duffel as I did. Once I was as far from the beds as I could manage in the limited space, I raised the flask to my lips and drank. It was water, with the touch of energy in it that meant it had been blessed. To make sure, I poured a little of the water into my palm so that the brothers could see it didn't fizzle on my skin. The Trickster watched the proceedings with mildly condescending interest, but said nothing.

Sam pulled his bag up onto the bed, one eye warily on the Trickster as he did, and rummaged for a second before coming out with a short knife. Dean held out his hand and Sam passed him the sheath.

Dean approached me cautiously, drawing the knife. The blade was bright, silver rather than steel. “Roll up your sleeve,” he said.

I threw the flask onto the nearer bed and did as he said, holding the arm out when he gestured for it. He drew the knife carefully across, just below the elbow, and I hissed at the thin pain.

Blood welled out of the shallow cut, bright red and perfectly normal, and it occurred to me that the sight of it should have bothered me far more than it did. I didn't have time to think that over, though, because Dean looked from the cut into my face, and belief began to dawn. He shoved the knife carelessly back into its sheath, not looking away to do it, and tossed it in the direction of the bed.

“Cas,” he said again.

“Yes,” I said, barely more than a whisper. Dean waited for half a second more and then lunged. I realized just in time that he was throwing his arms around me, not attacking.

“Jesus Christ, Cas,” he muttered. 

I didn't laugh; I was afraid if I started I wouldn't be able to stop. Instead I hugged him in return, solid and warm under my hands.

We didn't stay that way for long; after a few seconds Dean let me go and stepped back, putting his hands on my shoulders. “You son of a bitch,” he said, wondering. I was drawing breath to answer when the Trickster said, “This is all very touching, but I've got a very busy schedule, so can we get to the explaining?”

Dean started as if he'd forgotten the Trickster was there—I certainly had—and we turned to face the pagan god. “Aren't you dead?” Dean asked.

The Trickster smirked at him. “Do I look dead to you, Deano? You staked one of my mini-mes.” He snapped his fingers, and suddenly there was an exact duplicate standing next to him. He held up a palm and his double slapped it, then vanished again.

“We tried to kill you,” Sam said. “Why would you save Cas?”

“Well, a couple of reasons,” the Trickster said. “First one is, it's kind of my fault he was in Hell in the first place.”

“What?” Dean growled. The Trickster spread his hands out and said, “Yeah. My bad, OK? In my defense, I didn't know he was going to _sell his soul_. I just wanted him to keep you two muttonheads out of trouble.”

I blinked, and the pieces fell into place. “You brought me back from the future,” I said. 

“Yep,” the Trickster said, popping the P on the end of the word. I realized his lollipop was gone. “I didn't _like_ that future. It sucked, there were zombies and you couldn't get good chocolate. Lucky for me, Zachariah decided to screw with it.”

“Now who the hell is Zachariah?” Dean demanded.

“He was, and currently still is, and sadly will probably continue to be, an angel. Cas told you about the angels, right?” Dean and Sam both nodded, Sam looking utterly fascinated. “In the future, he wanted something from you, Dean, and you were spitting in his eye. So he sent you to the future your boy here is from to show you what happened if you didn't do it. Not that that worked out the way he wanted.”

“He made that future, _my_ future, invalid,” I said. “He changed it, and that made me and everyone else...variables.” 

“Give that boy a prize,” the Trickster said cheerfully. He snapped his fingers. Something large and colorful fell out of the air in front of me and I caught it on pure instinct. It was a plush toy, bright pink, in the shape of a rabbit. I stared at it for a second and then looked back up at the Trickster, who huffed, “Fine,” and made it disappear.

He went on, “So at first I thought, hey, Zach did my job for me! He changed how the timeline went, all I had to do was roll with the new one, right? Except that one didn't work out any better.” He paused and made a contemplative face. “Well, OK. The world didn't end, and there weren't any zombies, and the Devil didn't take over, which was teeechnically better. But also? _I_ wasn't around to enjoy it. I ended up really most sincerely dead, and that was _not_ on my list of things to do. So! Normally the thing about time travel is, you can't change stuff. But there I was, with this whole invalid timeline full of, as Cas so eloquently put it, variables.” He looked at me and shrugged. “I had to wait till Zachariah pulled Dean back out, kiddo, or I'd've yanked you sooner. Considering the shape you were in, it's a good thing Zach didn't take much longer. But you know, I'm awesome.”

“Yeah,” I said. “More awesome than you should be. A trickster shouldn't be able to do half the things you did. You pulled me out of _Hell_.”

“I know some back doors,” the Trickster said, the very picture of straight-faced innocence.

“That's fine for getting in,” I retorted. “You got us back out. Casually. It took a full-on siege to rescue Dean, the first time around. _Hundreds_ of—angels.” I had almost said _hundreds of us_. The Trickster raised an eyebrow at me; I ignored it. “You're not a minor pagan god.” The conclusion was staring me in the face, now, absurd as it was. “You did it _alone._ There are maybe a dozen beings with that kind of power, and only four that would call me _brother._ Only four who could command me.Lucifer certainly wouldn't stop the first seal breaking even if he could, and neither would Michael or Raphael. That leaves one.”

The Trickster smiled at me. It was startlingly sincere.

“Wait,” Sam said, sounding winded. “You're saying he's an archangel?” I nodded, and Sam transferred his wide-eyed gaze to the Trickster, who sketched a bow. 

“Gabriel,” he said calmly. “They call me Gabriel.”

Beside me, Dean muttered a curse. We all stared for a second; Gabriel didn't seem to mind. I was trying, and failing, to see a hint of the glory I remembered under his skin. Finally Dean said, “How the hell does an archangel become a trickster?”

“My own private witness protection,” Gabriel said, full of satisfaction. He threw himself back into his chair and put his feet up on the bed. “I skipped out of Heaven, had a face transplant, and carved out my own little corner of the world.” He sighed, and made a sour face. “Plus, I gotta be honest with you: I didn't want to watch the fight, you know? I love my brothers—all of them. Watching them turn on each other, tear at each other's throats? I couldn't bear it. So I left. And then, the first time around, they managed to get the Apocalypse going. Which, _so_ not my thing. I mean, yes, Lucy's in the cage and Michael's sitting up in Heaven pretending he knows what Daddy wants, but that's better than them trying to kill each other. Anyway, I like it down here and the fight would've torched half the planet. You guys might be monkeys but you don't deserve that.”

“So you pulled me out of my own timeline and put me here to stop it,” I said. 

“Yeah,” Gabriel said. “The plan was, you'd stop Sammy from getting ganked. Guess that one didn't go so well.” Dean drew an angry breath and Gabriel held up one hand. “Not a criticism, OK? Time doesn't like being changed even when you've got a variable to throw at it. I should've kept a better eye on you.”

“You were keeping an eye on us?” Sam asked, his voice full of skepticism.

“On Cas, anyway,” Gabriel said, waggling his eyebrows. Sam and Dean looked at me questioningly, and I shrugged at them. “Come on, seriously? You didn't notice? I did the names and everything!”

“Names,” I repeated, feeling extremely slow, and only more so when Gabriel gave an elaborate roll of his eyes.

“What's Angie short for?” he asked me with exaggerated patience.

“Angela,” I said. “But what—oh. _Oh_.”

Angie, in the bar the second night, when Dean and I hustled pool. Malika in Springfield. Mr. Nunzio, in that diner.

Gabriel watched me work it out with a smirk on his lips. “I knew about the muttonheads,” he said. “But then I was rocking the trickster gig in Ohio and they showed up with you in tow. Freaked me out. I actually _checked_ on you, present-day you, and there he was, all halo-enabled, and doing that without getting back on the Heavenly radar was _non_ -trivial, lemme tell you. But I got enough of a read off this you to check out where you came from, and that's what got this whole thing started.” He tossed a brightly colored candy into the air and caught it in his mouth as it came down.

“Cas is really an angel?” Dean asked. 

Gabriel eyed him for a second before replying, “Cas is really an angel.”

“Jesus,” Dean said. Sam looked smug for a second and Dean glared at him.

“No, not Jesus,” Gabriel said, grinning. “Angel. Not the same thing.” He paused, looking thoughtful, and then said, “Well, OK, he used to be an angel. Not so much anymore.” He made an apologetic face at me and I waved a hand in dismissal. “ _Anyway_. I don't have all day, so unless you boys have any other questions...?”

“The...the vessel thing,” Sam said. Gabriel looked at him and his face softened, just a little.

“Look, kiddo, you can't tell me you don't see the parallels,” he said. “Michael, the older brother, loyal to an absent father; Lucifer the younger brother, rebelling against Daddy's plan. It was you two, it was always you, ever since Dad flipped on the lights.” He shrugged. “Well, I say that sucks, and I didn't wanna do it. So I went and got Cas, and if Dad doesn't like it he can come back and smite me for it.” He waited, looking expectant, for a second or two, and then nodded and made a show of dusting off his hands. “OK, I gotta get back to my job.”

“What, announcing things?” I asked dryly.

“Archangel of Judgement here,” Gabriel said, cheerful. “I make sure the assholes of the world get what's coming to them.” He stood and put his hands on his hips. “Right! Been nice hangin' with you boys, but you know how it is. Places to go, douchebags to kill. See you around!” He raised one hand to snap and I yelped, “Wait!”

Amazingly, he did, his head cocked curiously.

“Thank you,” I said, and Gabriel grinned.

“Anytime, bro,” he said, and vanished.

* * *

A week and a half later, I set the little metal bowl down on a rock. The problem with the crossroads spell is that you have no control over which demon you get; fortunately I knew several other options.

I held the lit match over my impromptu brazier—I'd found it in a junk shop, and managed to buy it without Dean noticing, which was something of a feat since he got twitchy if I so much as went to the restroom alone; I was not looking forward to his reaction when I got back to the motel—and dropped it. As the flame hit the reagents, I muttered, “ _Dioman_ , Crowley.” _I summon thee._ Simple, but the best spells usually are. This one got most of its oomph from the burning contents of the bowl. Smoke billowed out, far more than the fire should have produced; when it cleared, there was a demon standing on the other side of my rock. The human host was middle-aged, a few inches shorter than me, with features that were pleasant in a forgettable way. He wore a neat suit that looked expensive to my untutored eye and an expression of mild surprise that quickly changed into a smirk. “Well, well,” he said. “If it isn't the little angel that could. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

I didn't think he was quite as easy as he made out; he glanced at the ground as he spoke and then to both sides, checking for traps and ambushes.

“I wanted to thank you,” I said, holding up my empty hands.

Crowley frowned and said, “Someone's been telling tales out of school.”

“What? No,” I said. 

“Then you're going to have to fill me in, mate, because aside from leaving the back door unlatched for our mutual friend I haven't done anything.”

“You let the Trickster in?”

Crowley made an annoyed sound through his teeth. “I did that,” he said, like he was admitting something. “Known him for years, I toss him some business sometimes.”

“He...didn't mention that part.”

“He wouldn't,” Crowley said, rolling his eyes. “Looks much better if he did it all himself, doesn't it?” He tucked his hands into the pockets of his jacket and rocked in place. “So what're we thanking me for?”

“For not telling Alastair,” I said. Crowley's eyebrows went up.

“Why would I?” he asked, though it sounded like a rhetorical question.

“I did notice you're a demon,” I said.

“ _I_ am in _sales_ , thank you so very much,” Crowley said. “Why would I want all the meatbags dead? Once that happens, no more job for me. Plus, don't know if you've noticed this part, but Lucifer _isn't_ a demon. He's an angel, kitten, and if he hates mankind, imagine what he feels about _us_.”

“He created you,” I said, and Crowley rolled his eyes. “We're just servants,” he replied. “If Lucifer manages to exterminate the humans, we're next. So I reckoned it was in my best interest to make sure he never gets the chance. The halo brigade'd never manage to keep all the seals safe and you, my feathered friend, kept the Righteous Man out of the Pit. Figured I owed you that one, and I pay my debts.”

“You didn't have to talk to me,” I said softly.

Crowley said nothing for a moment too long. “I said I owed you one,” he said at last. 

“Letting the Trickster in paid for that.”

“As may be,” Crowley said. “You went to Hell to stop the Apocalypse, mate. Showing up and chatting was the least I could do.”

“Thank you anyway.”

Crowley waved one hand and said, “You're welcome. Now it's not that this hasn't been a nice little talk, but I can only leave my people alone for so long before they start eating each other, so...?”

“If we meet again, we're not allies,” I said.

Crowley grinned. “Trust me, I'm not going near your pets; I _like_ living,” he said. “Don't make any more deals, angel.”

“I'm not planning to,” I said, and a moment later Crowley was gone. I sighed. So much for the easy portion of my evening plans.

I didn’t need anything fancy for the second summoning; it wasn’t, strictly speaking, even casting a spell. I sat, and closed my eyes, and _called_. I could feel it almost immediately: confusion, mostly, but under it a thread of curiosity, and then the light began to build, and I opened my eyes again because I needed to see it.

 _Who are you?_ Castiel asked me. It wasn’t words, not really, but I couldn’t understand it without that filter any longer; nonetheless the voice was as beautiful as I remembered.

“You need to get under cover, take a vessel,” I said. “There shouldn’t be anyone out here, but if there is you’ll burn their eyes out. Just so we can talk.”

Even more confusion, even more curiosity; _May I take you, that we may converse?_ It was hard to remember ever being that formal.

“For the duration of this conversation, yes,” I said, and braced myself.

It didn’t help.

I was expecting it to hurt, but it didn’t; in fact as soon as Castiel touched me I felt my chest ease. It really _didn’t hurt_ , instead of the pain being masked, and at first all I noticed was the relief of that. But the pressure of Castiel built under my skin, too strong to bear and brilliant; I remembered the description Dean had quoted to me once, _like being chained to a comet_ , and wondered if it had been better or worse for Jimmy. I couldn’t scream, though, because Castiel had control by then, and he glanced down at my hand and clenched it as I had done. It was almost enough to make me laugh. Jimmy had not been able to tell much of what I was doing; for me it was a little different, because once I had _been_ the one behind the wheel. Castiel took his attention from the body after a moment and we stared at each other in the vast white space that vessels occupy. I wondered what I looked like to him; to me he was shifting light in ragged-edged planes that suggested wings more than really representing them.

 _You are not James Edward Novak,_ Castiel said. _This is his body. Who are you?_ There was anger there now; Castiel would not like it if someone else possessed Jimmy.

 _I’m you,_ I told him. _Here, look_. I showed him—showed him the siege, and the rescue, and the barn inscribed with every protective sigil Bobby and Dean could muster. Showed him the seals breaking, and Uriel’s betrayal (and felt his shock when Anna rescued me), and how I had helped Dean but too late, and Lucifer rising, and how I had searched for God, searched but never found him until I couldn’t search any more, and the wrenching pain of my Grace when the Host deserted me—

 _Stop!_ Castiel cried. His voice was huge and overwhelming.

I stopped. There was a moment of silence. _Dean Winchester is not the Righteous Man,_ Castiel said at last. _He did not fulfill his destiny._

 _No,_ I replied, unable to prevent a thread of humor from winding its way through my mental voice. _I fulfilled it for him._

Castiel pulsed shock, but not disbelief; I could not lie to him, any more than he could to me. _You…condemned yourself to Hell, for this mortal man?_ The image of Dean he presented me was, to his view, so flawed as to make the concept ludicrous. 

_Yes_ , I said. _I would do it again, if I had to. But that isn’t why I called you, Castiel._

 _You are Castiel as well,_ he said. I smiled.

 _Now I’m Cas, and that’s enough._ He was so dubious it was funny, but let the comment pass.

_Why did you call me?_

I never did grasp small talk.

 _You needed to know about Uriel,_ I said. _He may be all right, now that there’s no risk of breaking the first seal, but you have to make sure. It’s possible that he hasn’t turned yet, but you needed to know._

 _I am…he will realize,_ Castiel said, unease coloring the words.

 _Not if you’re careful. Just watch him. And if you find he’s lost, don’t confront him alone._ I was accounted a good fighter, but Uriel was better.

 _Yes_ , Castiel replied. He settled himself, determination in every line of him. _I will leave you_. _I…thank you._

 _You’re welcome_ , I said, a little surprised. I had never been one for social graces, but perhaps Castiel was making allowances for my mortality. I felt him gathering his intent to leave and tried, again, to brace myself—this time for the return of the emptiness—but he paused, and said, _You fell._ I _fell._

 _He changed me,_ I said. _Mortals_ _can be dangerous that way._

Thoughtfully, _He could change me too._

 _You don’t want to be changed,_ I replied, and Castiel’s agreement was all but visible. _Then stay away. It shouldn’t be hard, you aren’t supposed to be down here anyway._

_I will._

The separation was almost as harrowing as the joining had been, and when it was over I sat where I was for a long time before I felt I could stand up.

* * *

“Did you even know Dad had this lockup?” Sam asked, sliding his laptop into its bag. I listened to the conversation with half an ear, trying to finish my book before I had to stand up; it was my turn to drive.

“No clue, but you gotta admit it’s something he would do. Cas, get a move on,” Dean said. He picked up his duffel and slung it over his shoulder. I read faster.

Sam went out first. Dean followed him and I heard them putting their bags in the car. Then Dean leaned around the doorframe and said, “Sam’s dropping off the key, Cas, are you coming?”

I paused and closed the book, and looked up at Dean, feeling the smile spread over my face. As I got to my feet I said, “Of course.”

**Author's Note:**

> When I started writing this, I had no idea it was going to end up this way. 
> 
> It's the longest thing I've ever written by a factor of four; it's taken a year and a half; it's insane how much of my id is on display here. And I've loved it. It started out noodling around with Cas waking up in the middle of "Croatoan", but when I was five thousand words in and still not out of River Grove it began to dawn on me that there might be an issue.
> 
> Then I realized that Cas--do not call him Castiel, he won't like it--had a voice that I could really sympathize with. (It's hard to write snarky without pop culture references; nonetheless, Coulson lurks in the margins and Jim Kirk gets a mention.) Cas, my Cas-of-2014, is defined by the things he lacks: Dean, Grace, enough. Given the chance to reclaim some of those things, what's he to do but put his head down and try? And if that means going to Hell, well, that's just exactly what he'll do.
> 
> I'm not sure I would've started it if I had known what a slog it was going to be, and it's probably a good thing that I put it into a challenge with a deadline; otherwise I'd still be noodling around, staring at chunks of text going "But I don't _want_ to write 'Playthings', it's boring!" As it is I'm distressed that 'Nightshifter' never got turned into a proper episode, but the payoff I wanted was Henricksen calling into the bank and getting Cas instead of Dean, which would have been high-larious; in the end I just couldn't make it work.
> 
> I love comments. Love them. Please ask me questions or pick nits!
> 
> Written for the DCBB, my artist is the amazing sharys_aogail, who went above and beyond with _nine_ pics for this. I'm not sure how to thank her, or the people who beta-read for me and helped me punch the thing into shape. You all know who you are.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Every Man's Got A Right [podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1411951) by [litrapod (litra)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/litra/pseuds/litrapod)




End file.
